Thursday, September 28, 2006 - The Michigan Daily - 3B

Pixies fill out Tate murder movie

By Kimberly Chou
Associate Arts Editor
Do you ever listen to The Pixies
and imagine the Manson family's
murder of Sharon Tate? Well, I
do. Here's the first installment of
our new feature "Score your own
movie." Daily Arts takes a scene
and sets it to appropriate music,
or we take a song and come up
with some matching cinematic
glory of our own.
Working title: "Helter Skel-
ter"
Starring: Romain Duris as
Charles Manson, Next Holly-
wood Starlet as Sharon Tate.
Key scene:
Wide-shot of landscape. Cam-
era's locked on one position.
No other sound in the follow-
ing scenes except for the Pixies'
"Where is my mind?"
"Oooh..."
"STOP."

"Oooh-oooh..." Manson family arrives at Tate
A lazy acoustic strum dribbles and husband Roman Polanski's
into the weighted boom-boom- Benedict Canyon home at end of
kish of Joey Santiago on drums first verse. Camera follows them
and the now famous whine of a as they get out of vehicle, make
guitar line. their way around the property
Manson family in car zips by and finally get into the house.
the camera. We see 18-
Switch to sec- Movie: "Helter Skelter" year-old
ond camera, kid Ste-
which moves Song: "Where is My phen Par-
up from the Mind?" by The Pixies ent in the
area by the driveway
front wheel shot and
and skims up, over and alongside killed first at the lines "Way out
the car, allowing the vehicle to in the water / See it swimming."
pass. Camera follows car from It's late night, dark out.
behind as Mansons journey to Second verse kicks in. Build-
destination. Several cuts back ing, driving guitars as Manson
and forth between Manson fam- family breaks in, wander around
ily members. house. Split screens to follow
"With your feet in the air individual killers, then the imag-
and your head on the ground / es reconvene as they find Sharon
Try this trick and spin it, yeah Tate and her friends Jay Sebring,
/ your head will collapse / But Frykowski and Folger.
there's nothing in it / And you'll "I was swimming in the
ask yourself/ Where is my mind? Caribbean / Animals were hid-
(x3) " . ing behind a rock

"Except the little fish / But
they told me, he swears / Tryin'
to talk to me koi koi"
Frantic stabbing commences.
"Way out in the water / See it
swimming."
Intensity builds. Switch
between close-ups of Charles
Manson and extreme-crops of
the others. Tate's screams heard
above bridge into third verse.
"With your feet in the air
and your head on the ground /
Try this trick and spin it, yeah
/ your head will collapse / But
there's nothing in it / And you'll
ask yourself/ Where is my mind?
(x3)"
The attacks now seem method-
ical; the continuity coupled with
the song's repetition is sooth-
ing. Everything is finished by
the end of the third verse. Time
fast-forwards through stillness
as track winds down. At the end
of the song, track finishes off
with "Ooo-oooh..." Sun rises.
"Oooh-ooh."

TOP: Charles Manson. BOTTOM: The Pixies.

courtesyo fcourv.com.

Excuse me, sir. The masses are knocking, and they aren't happy

By Jeffrey Bloomer
Managing Editor
It only seemed fitting. As the
box-office numbers rolled this
past weekend, "Jackass: Num-
ber Two," a movie celebrating
the systematic self-torture of
a half-dozen man-child fools,
was looking to push $30 million
in its first three days. It's the
Christ-don't-you-people-have-
anything-better-to-do debut of
the year, especially consider-
ing that it's an R-rated movie
appealing chiefly to 15 year
olds hoping to pick up a few
ideas for when mom and dad go
out of town.
But that was only No. 1,
and down on the charts - way
down - was the real story of
the weekend. Lurking quietly at
No. 7, the suits behind it hop-
ing it would go unnoticed, was
"All the King's Men," a remake
of the 1949 classic (a winner for
best picture) with a dream cast
comprised of some of the finest
movie stars in the world. In its
first weekend, the Sean Penn-
led drama debuted with a stun-
ningly weak $3.7 million, a total
that would be considered subpar
for a Hilary Duff exploitation
movie. It's the sort of epic fail-
ure that in a typical turnaround
would end careers, be the subject
of shit-show press conferences
and invite nasty, yeah-we-fig-
ured assessments from rival stu-
dio chiefs. How could a movie
that's such an obvious sell tank
so extravagantly?
There is, and there always
is, a catch here. The movies in
question, though on the surface

at polar-opposite ends of what
would conventionally fall under
the umbrella of "good" film,
had a bizarre reversal in critical
reaction going into the weekend.
Over at The New York Times,
for example, A.O. Scott lam-
pooned "All the King's Men"
as "overwrought and tedious,"
while "Jackass" earned raves
from Nathan Lee as "some of
the most fearless, liberated and
cathartic comedy in modern
movies." Many, many other crit-
ics followed suit - everywhere
there was timid, surprised love
letters to the boys of "Jackass"
and slap-on-the-wrist attacks on
"All the King's Men."
This strange turn of events,
though certainly an anomaly,
represents a new take on a
dichotomy that recently has
come to the forefront of the
public's relationship with popu-
lar film. Increasingly critics and
even film buffs have come under
fire from the greater moviegoing
public, who see the general aver-
sion of self-touted movie snobs
to their favorite films and go on
the defensive. Reviews have no
effect on a movie's business, it's
often argued, and critics serve
only to make the public feel bad
for wanting to see the movies
they do. "It wasn't trying to win
an Oscar, it's just meant to be
funny" is a favorite mantra. It's
a sentiment that even the major
studios seem to share: The early
months of the year were marked
by an industry-wide trend of
not screening first-run films
for critics, because, well, why
bother?
As such, conventional analy-

sis of last weekend's box office
would tend to paint a similar
picture: "Jackass," the movie
ceremoniously for and by the
masses, won the weekend in a
landslide, while the "legitimate"
filmmaking - "All the King's
Men" - was left in the cold by
average American moviegoer, a
creature who couldn't possibly
appreciate a symbol more subtle
than a bull ramming a guy in
the crotch.
Except, of course, that that's
not what actually happened.
Everyone was wrong. Perhaps,
as some critics have noted
recently, the perceived void
between critics and their read-
ers is more reactionary than it
is an actual drop-off in taste. So
what if every college kid you've
ever known would be equally as
content watching "Old School"
as "The Godfather"? Who's
to say a critic or a run-of-the-
mill film enthusiast wouldn't
be as well? Not a soul over the
age of 16 who went to "Jack-
ass: Number Two" thought it
would make for good conversa-
tion afterward, and neither, it's
fair to assume, did most of the
critics who screened it. There's
some common ground here. We
all love film. Why can't we talk
about it anymore?

Pretty faces, the beach, potential threesome. Wait, why did no one go see this?
There are other questions: But let's leave it. For now, every- Departed" (heaven) and "The
How did "Jackass: Number one take a breath and appreci- Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The
Two," which I can't imagine ate, if only for a moment, the Beginning" (hell), remember
was terribly different from community experience of going that the experience you're about
number one, get universally to 'see a movie. A week from to have, and the choice thereof,
better reviews than its predeces- now, when you're navigating is entirely your own.
sor? How exactly does someone your way to side-by-side doors Besides, fuck it. Film died in
screw up "All the King's Men"? alternatively showing "The 1968. You have nothing to lose.


The
Princeton
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300-2Review I PrincetonReview.com

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Date:
Time:
Venue:

29 September 2006
7pm
Kuenzel Room, The Michigan Union

915 12 4

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It starts with you: www.ubs.com/graduates

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