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