Monday
December6, 2004
arts.michigandaily.com
artspage@michigandaily.com
ARTS
9A
Literary legend
succumbs to senility
By Zac Psskowitz
Daily Arts Writer
B" KRVE
"You blinked first. Now you have to star in 'King Arthur 2: The Search for Curly's Gold.' "
GETIGE
STAR-LADEN CAST SAVES DRAMA FROM TROUBLED SCRIPT
Tom Wolfe, the great chronicler of
post-World War II American life - with
its surfers and rocket ships and race car
drivers - is back with his first novel in
six years, "I Am Charlotte Simmons."
Unfortunately, that Wolfe of the vivacious
verbiage is no longer around. Posterity has
snatched much of the snap from the loop-
ing, whirling, swirling bouts of prose that
once made the publication of a Tom Wolfe
hook a singular lit-
erary event. iA
In "Simmons," I Am
Wolfe takes on the Charlotte
comfortable life Simmons
of the American By Tom Wolfe
undergraduate in Farrar, Strauss
the first years of and Giroux
the new millen-
nium. (Wolfe visited the University while
conducting his research). The story fol-
lows the first six months of the intrepid
Charlotte Simmons, an academic dyna-
mo from the small mountain hamlet of
Sparta, N.C., at the prestigious Dupont
University. Wolfe's reserved heroine
quickly finds herself swimming in a sea
of alcohol, sex and drugs populated with
rakish frat boys and basketball-playing
nimrods. Even the self-styled intellectu-
als who abstain from the worst excesses
of Dupont are boors who monomaniacal-
ly covet a Rhodes scholarship or a plum
job with a consulting firm. Wolfe inter-
sperses his sociological observations with
a skeletal plot that involves the political
aspirations of the governor of California,
sexual improprieties, power and greed all
revolving around the slight heroine.
"Simmons," with its web of inter-
locking characters, infatuation with the
importance of social class and intri-
cate plot, is highly evocative of Charles
Dickens. However, unlike his idol's best
work, Wolfe is unable to devise a satis-
factory mechanism to wrap up the nov-
el's expansive threads. In many ways,
"Simmons" is much closer to Theodore
Dreiser's "Sister Carrie." A young girl
from the country travels to a sinful world
in an expos6 of contemporary life that
doubles as a morality tale. This com-
parison is a stretch given that Dreiser's
ruminations on Chicago and New York
are some of the most novel descriptions
of life in the metropolis ever expressed
in the English language.
Wolfe, in contrast, mines well-estab-
lished tropes on the bankruptcy of the
contemporary university for his mate-
rial. Multiculturalism, identity politics,
big-time athletic programs and the Greek
system are the usual suspects that Wolfe
singles out for censure. It's worth noting
that Don DeLillo's "White Noise" offered
more compelling depictions of the strange
social practices of the American under-
By Amanda Andrade
Daily Arts Writer
For all the hype surrounding "Closer" that
doesn't involve the omission of Natalie Port-
man's breasts from the final cut ("Star Wars"
geeks and "Leon" pedophiles await the extend-
ed DVD with baited breath), one would think
that the season's most celebrity-packed art film
would be an unmitigated triumph. Far from it -
the screenplay for "Closer" is
as pretentiously theatrical as
its title, and the film finds a Closer
precarious kind of brilliance At the Quality 16
only through the spectacular and Showcase
execution by both director Columbia
and stars.
Patrick Marber penned
the script adapted from his own play about four
people of varying despicability who couple and
uncouple in London. "Closer" is an acclaimed
and highly successful play, but the adaptation
saddles the film with too many theatrical con-
ventions. For example, Marber's dialogue is
witty, rapid-fire and rhythmically poetic, which
makes it enjoyable on a stage, but outlandishly
unbelievable on screen.
The story also requires frequent chronologi-
cal leaps to sell the emotional involvement of
;,
its characters. Alerting the audience to such a
jump, the characters will always allude to the
passage of time. It's necessary to the play, but
on screen it's disruptive and irritating.
Beyond these details, Marber's work is quite
amazing. The core themes of isolation and male
competitiveness are powerful and could have
made for a truly fantastic script in the hands of
a more film-savvy screenwriter.
Luckily for "Closer," director Mike Nichols
is more than adept at working with the material
at hand. The film draws parallels with Nichols's
"Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," another
four-person relationship drama adapted from a
play. It's a great testament to "Closer" as a film
that it doesn't suffer for the comparison. Nich-
ols is sure-handed and subtle, filling the screen
with a deliberately uncomfortable emptiness
and palpable frustration to mirror the minds of
his characters.
And what ugly characters they are! Ranging
from pseudo-sensitive sleaze bag to vindic-
tively selfish, these stars discard their glamor-
ous images to fully inhabit some of the most
dysfunctional and profoundly tedious charac-
ters seen on screen this year. This quartet of
masochists wander aimlessly through the dark
underbelly of London in an orgy of infidelity
and licentious lust through a series of depress-
ing events.
The most objectionable role, however, is
played by Clive Owen ("King Arthur"). Owen's
Larry is something akin to a revolting and self-
absorbed alpha male gorilla. He carelessly flits
from woman to woman while spending his eve-
nings cruising through Internet sex sites. Owen
gives a brilliantly appalling performance.
Julia Roberts embodies the emotional dis-
connect of her Anna in a muted and powerful
performance that's miles away from "Runaway
Bride." Jude Law's performance as Dan, a
sniveling, smug and selfish wreck of a man, is
certainly not the high point for Law, People
magazine's sexiest man alive, but it may well be
for Law, the actor.
But the strongest performance comes from
Portman. Possibly because her character is the
least offensive and Portman's features strike
such a miraculous balance between childlike
innocence and mature elegance, her Alice is a
fascinating combination of mildly unlikable
and compulsively magnetic. Portman's witty
and enigmatic performance is nothing short of
brilliant, the fulfillment of a child prodigy's
promise.
Cinephiles should have a field day with so
much on-screen artistry. For the rest of the
world, however, most of this review won't mat-
ter so much as the fact that "Closer" affords the
opportunity to grab some friends and ruminate
over Law's spectacular cheekbones and Port-
man's ass.
graduate more than 20 years ago. Wolfe's
depictions of college life rely on titillation
at the expense of the methodical insightful
profiles that Wolfe has used to great effect
in his nonfiction work.
All of these offenses would be par-
donable if not for the greatest failure of
"Simmons:" the mediocre prose. Occa-
sionally, a glimpse of Wolfe's classic style
works its way across the page as one of
his characters launches into a digression
on what a business consultant actually
does or when a campus protest is marred
by a fraternity's hijinks, but these flashes
are far too infrequent to sustain "Sim-
mons" through its 676 pages.
The one success of the novel is when
the author incorporates the story of a
precocious Nobel Prize-winning neu-
roscientist, Prof. Victor Ransome Star-
ling. Wolfe threads descriptions of the
professor's theories on the human mind
throughout the novel, which parallel
the development of the heroine's own
thinking. Simmons begins her time at
Dupont as a rugged individualist, but
she falls sway to the seductive appeal of
Starling's arguments. Simmons destroys
this self in an act of "moral suicide." Her
subtle transformation from a character
who controls her fate to a mere thinking
machine and her return to her original
self is an intriguing theme that gives the
reader something substantive to chew
over in a book that otherwise lacks intel-
lectual nourishment.
As a septuagenarian writer who
strives to "cram the world" into his nov-
els, it's unlikely that Wolfe has many
more books left in him. "Simmons" is a
culmination to Wolfe's long career and
it strives to weave together his love of
reporting, his capacity for the deft social
observation and the conservative's eter-
nal pessimism that something has been
lost in this generation of youth. The net
effect is unsatisfying, resulting in a shell
of a novel that is a forgettable coda to a
singular career.
'Frasier' says goodbye
in finale DVD set
Korean film probes war's hardship
By Abby Stotz
Daily Arts Writer
"Frasier" always was the sitcom
for smart people. Winning 31 Emmy
awards during its run, the show fol-
lowed high-brow psychiatrist Frasier
Crane (Kelsey Grammer) from that
familiar watering hole in Boston
named Cheers to Seattle, where he
moved in with
his retired police-
man father Martin Frasier: The
(John Mahoney) Complete
and got his very Final Season
own radio show. Paramount
He bickered with
his equally hoity-
toity brother Niles (David Hyde
Pierce) who had his own problems,
being desperately in love with Daphne
Moon (Jane Leeves), Martin's home
caregiver. The Crane family raised the
IQ of American sitcoms for 11 years
before "Frasier" ended last spring.
The last season in this long-running
series is now available on DVD.
Fortunately for "Frasier," the writing
is great enough to sustain far-fetched
plot lines like Martin marrying one of
Frasier and Niles's old baby-sitters and
Niles's ex-wife going to jail for shoot-
ing her polo-playing Argentinean boy-
friend. The cast members fit their roles
perfectly, especially Pierce as Niles, a
walking bundle of nerves susceptible
to combustion at any moment. The
tOE
}nrtn
guest stars aren't shabby either. They
include Wendie Malick ("Just Shoot
Me") as Martin's new wife, Laura
Linney ("Kinsey") as Frasier's match-
maker/love interest and the triumphant
return of Bebe Neuwirth as Frasier's
ice queen ex-wife Lilith.
While the show remained above
average for its swan song season, it's
obvious that it was time for "Frasi-
er" to end. In the beginning, Niles's
unrequited love for Daphne was the
best part of the show. The chemistry
between Pierce and Leeves was unde-
niable, but after Niles and Daphne
settled down and got hitched, their
sparks were dulled by marital bliss.
Grammer looks tired and bored with
his character which, while under-
standable because he's been Frasier
since the '80s, winds up making the
protagonist the most boring part of
the show.
For such a great series, the extras
are sparse. They consist of only two
lowly featurettes, one showcasing the
cast and one displaying the producers
and creators. Neither is terribly inter-
esting as it was the last season and all
of the interviews have a high school
yearbook sentimentality. No insight-
ful tidbits will be found in either,
merely a load of gracious thanks to
co-workers. The show and its fans
deserved better.
"Frasier" was an intelligent, strong-
ly written and well-acted sitcom, argu-
ably the most successful spin-off of all
time. But it was time for it to ride off
By Karl Stampfl
Daily Arts Writer
MovIL REVIEW * * e
"Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood Of
War" proves that good stories tran-
scend cultures, languages and points
of view. Originally produced and
released in South
Korea, its epic
themes and pure Tae Guk
entertainment Gi: The
value carry over Brotherhood
to this side of the of War
Pacific.A
The Korean Michian Theater
blockbuster tells
the story of two aDnd Gtian Flms
brothers corroded
by the Korean
War. They are drafted into the South
Korean army, and from then on, their
decisions are driven not by the conflict
with the Communists in the North, but
by their family ties. The older brother,
Jin-tae (Dong-Kun Jang), seeks to pro-
tect his younger sibling, Jin-Seok (Bin
Won), by taking on increasingly dan-
gerous missions after he is told that if
he earns a medal the army will send
his brother home. But as war almost
never is, the plot is not as simple as
that - Jin-tae is corrupted by his
glory and suspicions of communist
sympathies plague his family, spiral-
ing the pair into a hellish world that
tests the limits of brotherhood.
This film is as much about family
as it is about war and the sacrifices
made for both. The family theme is
what raises it above most war films
with their flashy violence and purely
heroic characters. Even the subtitles
don't hinder the story. A few minutes
into the film, they seem to disappear
as the compelling visuals, intense vio-
lence and complex characters come to
the fore.
Rendering it even more compelling,
"Tae Guk Gi" features a war that Hol-
lywood tends to overlook - a refresh-
ing cinematic break from World War
It and Vietnam. It is also interesting
to see an American war from another
perspective.
But at times the violence may
be too intense for many filmgoers.
Gore flies across the screen and
blood splatters everywhere - even
in close-ups. The cinematography
is jarring during the numerous bat-
tle sequences and the camera jerks
around during fighting scenes, mak-
ing it hard to follow exactly what's
going on. Combined with fast-paced
battles, it is often difficult to deter-
mine who's shooting at whom. That's
effective for a while because of its
shock value, but put together with
the film's 140-minute running time,
it becomes overwhelming.
Still, its intense epic quality should
be something to be celebrated rather
than shunned. Although it only cost
$12.8 million to make (whereas one
of America's war movies, 1998's
"Saving Private Ryan," dropped
twice that on advertising alone),
"Tae Guk Gi" is the highest-grossing
movie in Korean history. According
to Variety, lmost one quarter of all
Koreans saw it and it deserves simi-
lar attention in the United States.
The Flying V.
into the syndication sunset. This DVD
preserves an excellent show but would
be a far better buy with more substan-
tive extras.
Show: ****
Picture/Sound: ****
Features: *
Make aStatemvent on cam pus.
The Michigan Student Assembly (MSA) has proposed 18 amendments to the Statement of Student
Rights and Responsibilities.The Student Relations Advisory Committee (SRAC) reviews the proposals
and advises the President. Representatives from MSA, SRAC, and the Office of Student Conflict
Resolution (OSCR, a Unit of the Division of Student Affairs) will be on hand to answer
fisyour questions about the proposals.
Open Forum
Wednesday, December 8,2004
4:00-6:00 pm
Michigan Union - Anderson Rooms C&D
You can also read and submit feedback about the proposed amendments ONLINE:
www.studentpolicies.dsa.umich.edu/review/
Co-sponsored by:
Michigan Student Assembly
Student Relations Advisory Committee
Office of Student Conflict Resolution