Monday
March 27, 2006
arts. michigandaily.com
artspage@micbigandaily.com
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My spring cleaning
'STAY'
AWAY,
T'm a pretty big tool. Not that I
don't have interesting things to say
sometimes, but mostly I'm far off
base about trends. Like three months
behind. At least.
But it's spring, and there actually is a pal-
pable sense of a new beginning. Or maybe
just new albums and movies to complain
about. The following is my attempt to
separate the wheat from the
chaff, the lambs from the
lions. I mean, we're all told
to beware the ides of March
and that April is the cruelest
month. We need something
entertaining.
TV
Lamb: Some of the
smartest, most stunningly
motivated women I know
watch "Grey's Anatomy." EVE
But it's stocked with star- McGA
ry-eyed girls in scrubs,
squealing like some surreal combina-
tion of World War II housewives and
Jessica Simpson while the superhuman
guys figure everything out and direct
traffic. Sometimes I think it's setting
feminism back decades. It's like "The
O.C." with medical jargon.
Lion: "MTV2" actually plays videos.
No asinine interviews with Fall Out Boy.
No maddening little Real World-ers pout-
ing in some chinzy resort. Just blocks of
old-school Mary J. Blige, Bad Boy and
LL Cool J videos followed by equally
throwback skate-punk videos from Ran-
cid. Shit, MTV.com even lets you listen to
entire albums before they're released.
Film
Lamb: Aside from the patchworked
script, buzzkill editing and political "mes-
sage" so blunt it beats you into silence, "V
for Vendetta" is pretty decent. The world
needs more films that stick out their chest
and make a statement, but there's got to be
some dramatic meat on the body politic.
Hugo Weaving's lines make old episodes
of "GJ. Joe" look deep, and Natalie Port-
man layers on the schlock. I do, in theory,
agree with the film's ideas, but even I'm
sensible enough to know that presentation
AF
is seven eighths of the battle.
Lion: "Cache" thrills as it paralyzes.
Slow, disturbing and socially revealing,
the film's camera is the most tantaliz-
ing perspective on postmodern life in
the pluralistic, postcolonial metropolis.
It concerns the past of one bourgeoisie
Parisian, but with an unflinching eye
and a profound restraint from mere
indictment for past sins, it's
an unwavering look at the
modern sense of guilt.
Music
Lamb: Has there been a
good rock record recently?
Spoon feels like ages ago, The
Arctic Monkeys are already
frittering out, the Yeah Yeah
Yeahs made a fine sophomore
album (except the volume was
N cut by half) and anyone who
RVEY thinks Cat Power's new album
(a gem) is more rock than blues
is clearly misled. I'm not saying indie rock
is on its ass, I'm just saying.
Lion: Has there been a month without
a good rap album lately? Ghostface, Juve-
nile, T.I., Talib Kweli, E-40, Lil' Wayne
(still feels new) and, well, you get the pic-
ture. America is settling into the fact that
rap is the dominant popular music and that
hip hop is a major artery in our cultural
corpus. More people recognize good, last-
ing rap when they hear it, and the market
is producing more credible rappers and
rap albums than any other time since
the mid-'90s. And it's not just the South.
East Coast purists have reason to rejoice
with Papoose, Saigon and J-Hood all set
for debut discs before the year is through.
Now if only someone can politely tell 50
Cent to step his rap game up ...
Disagreeing with me is fine, but you've
got about five weeks until you're done with
college for the year. Now would be the
time to start figuring out what you actu-
ally appreciate about popular art. Time to
divide up the May flowers from the mud.
STAY F
AWAY
KILLER-VIDEO-GAME
THRILLER LETS EXPECTED
TEENAGE BLOOD
By David R. Eicke
Daily Arts Writer
"If you had any less sense, you'd be half a penny."
Yes, isn't it beautiful - the wit of modern horror?
But don't worry. "Stay Alive" isn't just poet-
ics. It has an original plot as well: There's a
40
video game, and if you die
in that game, you die in real
life the same way you died in
the game. American society
is fortunate that something
like this didn't happen in
the late '80s. If it had, the
Stay Alive
At Showcase
and Quality 16
Hollywood
coAur tesy olf mouywYUV
"Dude, this would have never happened on my IBook."
entirety of the 2006 graduating class would be
long dead from accidental contact with a giant
turtle's pixilated face.
On the other hand, there might be a few left
that would have gotten to hook up with Toad-
stool. And that, my friends, would be worth it.
"Stay Alive" is basically an interactive ver-
sion of "The Ring," only dramatically less intel-
ligent and with about 20 little barefoot undead
girls who can't seem to walk correctly (instead
of, you know, just one).
According to the movie's legend, these little
girls were all murdered by a freaky 17th-cen-
tury countess named Elizabeth Bathory who
lived on a plantation in New Orleans. The video
game in question, called "Stay Alive," is based
on her life.
Avid gamer Hutch (Jon Foster, "The Door
in the Floor") inherits the game just after the
death of his friend, who had been testing it out
for the production company. Only after Hutch
has started playing it himself, though, does he
begin to realize that the game itself may have
been the cause of his friend's death. Now, as
he and his friends play, they start to die one by
one in ways eerily similar to their respective
digital dooms.
Eventually, they trace the game company
back to the Bathory's old plantation (apparently,
after she died, she taught herself C++ and built
a kick-ass production studio in the basement),
where game and reality fuse. Here they must
defeat the old witch or die on the point of her
antique scissors.
The film succeeds at one thing: It's scary.
First-time writer/director William Brent Bell
capitalizes on the suspense built in between the
time when the digital character dies and when
its human counterpart dies, while also playing
on the human fears of deformity and ambula-
tory dead things.
But this has all been done before. The "Final
Destination" series uses the same type of sus-
pense, and films like "The Grudge" and even
"The Exorcist" have pushed deformity to its
fullest potential. "Stay Alive" basically has
an originality that begins and ends with the
interactive component of the death plot - and
even that was a central tenet of the '80s cult hit
"BrainScan."
They did manage, though, to avoid the racial
stereotypes so often found in this type of movie.
In lieu of a black guy, they kill the best actor
first - which is too bad; the cast could've used
his help. Foster can't even sell himself as a
gamer, let alone a gamer in a deadly situation.
On top of the bland performances, the plot
suffers from loose logic and a predictable end-
ing also ripped from "The Ring." The movie is
altogether unremarkable, falling into the blurry
horror filmscape of the last 10 years.
Oh, and by the way, the girl in the preview
who looks like Elisha Cuthbert ("House of
Wax") is not Elisha Cuthbert. All the more rea-
son to stay away.
a
- We need help. Do you speak
McGarvey's language? E-mail
him at evanbmcg@umich.edu.
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