2B - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, September 7, 2006

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National
The dangerously popular social website
MySpace.com announced its partner-
ship with Snocap last Friday. Snocap is
Napster founder Shawn Fanning's new
tech company, and you don't have to be
a music-industry bookie to anticipate the
new Myspace music store's inevitable
filching subscribers to Apple's iTunes.
Even small unsigned bands will be able
to sell music through the Snocap system,
something Apple doesn't yet offer. And
you can't flirt with that one *TOTALLY
hOtT* 15-year-old via iTunes either.
As a preemptive strike against the forth-
coming Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle "The
Blood Diamond," directed by Edward
Zwick, the diamond industry yesterday
placed several full-page ads in national
newspapers in hopes of curbing advance
controversy over the film. The movie,
scheduled to hit American theaters Dec.
15, is set against the backdrop of the
1999 civil war in Sierra Leone. No word
yet on why a white matinee idol is neces-

sary for such a story (though perhaps we It'sejust so weird
should as Zwick, who also cast Tom Cruise a
as "The Last Samurai").

For the first time in 30 years, Bob Dylan
has a No. 1 album. Modern Times is
Dylan's highest-debuting album since
1976's Desire. If the only exposure you've
had to the freewheelin' man himself is his
recent iPod commercial, then check out
his latest and put another dollar in the
pocket of a legend.
Local
Ann Arbor's own Tally Hall was featured
at intervals all day Tuesday and Wednes-
day on MTV's "You Hear It First" spot. In
the early morning hours, the recent Uni-
versity alums also featured in spots on
MTV2. Their album, Marvin's Marvelous
Mechanical Museum, debuts nationwide
next Tuesday.

The first published photos of Tom Cruise
and Katie Holmes's infant daughter Suri
have surfaced, and it's not just the gossip
blogs - on guard since the kid's alleged
April birth - that are all caught up in the
surprisingly normal looking baby joy. No
rumored antennae, no noticeable disfig-
urement. CNN and Fox News's websites
have jumped on the glossy Annie Leibo-
vitz photo production, a sizable spread
in Vanity Fair's October issue (available
nationwide next week) depicting the fam-
ily in McCartneyesque fashion.

"Halloween" (1978)
Directed by John Carpenter
Starring: Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasance, P.J. Soles
In retrospect, it's astonish-
ing to think that John Car- *
penter's visionary (he wrote,
directed and banged down
Hollywood doors for financ-
ing) horror film could have
been so lightly regarded upon
initial release. The capital -
"D" definitive suburban horror
film, "Halloween" is an exqui-
site, minimally violent, Jung- TN
ian explication of singularly
American fear. Came
Each scene is a lesson in Home!
pacing, lighting and the beauty
of small, stock characters (how
is it that the little kids know
what is happening the whole
time?). Shot for less than the
price of a modern, high-end you shit yourself. You get
luxury car, "Halloween" puts a hysterical and you miss all
then-unknown Jamie Lee Cur- carefully placed symbols
tis, veteran British character philosophical arguments.
actor Donald Pleasence and a movie hunts you down.
hastily sprayed-painted white And yet at the core of
mask in the driver's seat and diamond-cut film is the old
slowly scares every jaded bone story in the book: a buc
in your post-ironic body. Take suburban holiday; teenag
notes: sparse dialogue, actu- on shaky moral ground;
ally effective self-referential block of pretty little hous
humor, minutes of silence in a virginal, upstanding ba
the soundtrack, minimal expo- sitter; a raving Cassandra
sition and that goddamned a psychologist; and the hE
mask are all touchstones and just out-of-range vision o
jumping off-points for hun- terrible black shape.
dreds of trash slashers and Even that's unstal
thousands of adolescent night- Michael Meyers, the n
mares. behind the mask, is the L
Even describing it is a deli- mate abstraction of fear. -
cate dance. It's almost irre- script calls him "the shap
sponsible to describe the film the kids think he's the boog
in too much detail; it tran- man and no one ever knc
scends rational discussion what's really going on.
of art because it's so purely adults are clueless, the k
unsettling. Your academic cen- are helpless, and fate
ters in your brain are supposed unstoppable. "Halloween"
to shut down. Carpenter craft- the most passionate cinen
ed a truly smart, artful, literally ic display of American fear z
breath-stealingly beautiful film disorder we have. But as mi
- watch the lighting on Cur- as it's intellectualized, thei
tis during the final scenes as no avoiding the emotioi
she fights back against Mey- This is the scariest film :
ers - but it's supposed to have ever seen, and thei
be a visceral experience. The nothing you can do about it
film pulls you between brain
and guts in the best way; you - Evan McGar
try and think the film out and managing arts ed

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