8 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, October 3, 2006 Costner, Kutcher sink to new depths By Imran Syed Daily Arts Writer There are really only two types of movies in the world: The ones where the grizzled, over-the-hill ex-champion schools the ** 7k . rash, unbridled hotshot The - and then everything else. Kevin Costner and Guardian Ashton Kutcher know At the Showcase this, and "The Guard- and Quality 16 ian" is their melodra- Touchstone matic attempt to make sure you do too. After all, surely we've all wondered: How do you decide who to save? As the self-described "motion picture event of the fall," "The Guardian" is the story of Ben Randall (Costner, "Messagae in a Bottle"), the Coast Guard rescue swim- mer of choice for those lucky enough to be doing their open-sea drowning up near Alaska's Bering Strait. Ben's a legend, but as the gray stubble on his cheeks shows, he's getting old. Then one dark and stormy night, a rescue goes bad and his whole crew dies. Broken, Ben decides to hang up his flippers and transfers to the rescue swimmer training academy to school the young padawans, Yoda-style. There he meets Jake Fischer (Kutcher), a brash high school swim champ who turned down scholarships from "every Ivy league school" to come to pursue his dream of rescue-swimming. Of course, he's got a big head and wants nothing but to show off and instant glory. But when life lessons rain, they pour, and before you can even get your mind around the idea of the guy from "Punk'd" in an Ivy league college, Jake's already a wise old sage, master of selfless- ness, courage and humility. With his huge sunglasses and cold, suave swagger, Jake easily resembles Tom Cruise's Maverick in "Top Gun." But Mav- erick rebelled for a reason; Jake seems to do it just for the hell of it. His character is hol- low, crafted for looks alone with outbursts of melancholy that are difficult not to laugh at. Kutcher has fashioned his heroic senti- mentality in the Hayden Christenson circa the "Star Wars Episode II" mold - in all UMMA exhibit tells it 'Plain' By Abigail B. Colodner Daily Arts Writer University of Michigan Muse- um of Art Off/Site, the exhibition space above street level on South Uni- Mary versity Ave- Lucier nue, allows " e a UMMA a The Plains spot in the of Sweet contempo- Regret" rary art world Through Nov. while the 19 Guided main building tours Oct. 12 on State Street and 26 at 7 udros p.m. and Oct. undergoes 15 and 29 major expan- at 2 p.m. sion. The AtUMMA limitations of the temporary location - no storied architecture, no climate control to protect the integrity of painted works - made UMMA recast itself as a selective exhibition space purely for pho- tography, film and video. Upcom- ing exhibitions this academic year will run for about a month and a half each. Expect shows that explore a range of locations, from an industrial plant in Dearborn to landscapes like cemeteries that are shaped by a human aesthetic. The current exhibit concerns itself with recent economic and population changes in the Great Plains region. A placard written by the director of the North Dakota Museum of Art, which commis- sioned Lucier's works, attributes these changes to the emergence of "agribusiness." That museum's interdisciplinaryproject"Emptying Out of the Plains;' which includes Lucier's installation, explores how these mega-facilities have changed the lives of local residents and workers: They threaten to render the family farm obsolete. Lucier's videos project onto four angled walls of a room and run on a smaller screen in the room's center. Informed by the placard and primed for investigation into the tenuous lives of Great Plains residents, the viewer enters with a sense of purpose. As visitors sit in one of the wooden chairs posi- tioned around the screen, they understandably feel as if they've been prepped to learn something. But Lucier's videos shy away from the details that would ground us in the setting the exhibition aims to bring to life. Stationary and mov- ing shots of landscapes appear and fade on the screens. At one point all four walls are projected with a calf's birth. On the middle screen, wheat waves in the wind. Gazing at an abandoned farm- house, you suspect that the person behind the lens, perhaps Lucier herself, knows as well as the audi- ence that nothing is about to hap- pen. By "capturing" these scenes on video, Lucier communicates the lingering hope for renewal felt by the Great Plains' displaced peo- ple. It's a sentiment easily felt the moment visitors enter the exhibit. Lucier's videos mull over it rather than draw out what makes this situ- ation a particular one. When Lucier gets around to looking at the agribusinesses them- selves, she finds visuals ripe for exploration but again stays away from analysis. These engaging shots make the case for Lucier's use of video, which otherwise feels a bit strained. Smokestacks churn up the air with force, wave upon wave of frothy cloud filling the sky. In a sustained close-up, a cow exhales white puffs into the morning air, chomping its jaw with factory-inspiring regularity. In this juxtaposition of two forms of industry, Lucier's endearing cow at last directs our sympathies. The second segment of Lucier's installation is a repellant slow- motion sequence of bull-riding at a rodeo. A schmaltzy, looped country-western ballad combines with the faintly ridiculous video to bewildering effect. Is the viewer supposed to feel warmly toward the slow-moving cowboy who has to be rescued by handlers? Or do we root for the bull, which is reduced to a spliced, geometric mass? The song implies we should find it hard to tear ourselves away from this scene, rather let us say this emblem of the threatened American spirit, but the view- er may find he leaves his little deskchair with no trouble at all. Your career's been punk'd. his irritably childish glory. Now, how can that be a good thing? And why is Costner suddenly stuck in brainless roles like this and his last one in "Rumor Has It"? You'd think stars like him would know a good screenplay from the mess "The Guardian" is built upon. But then again you gotta pay the bills somehow. Tired and boring though they often are, you've got to take a minute and admire the brazen audacity with which some films seize the vapid and cliched. The sheer fury with which "The Guardian" propels itself makes you almost overlook the fact that everything you see has been done hundreds of times before. The film, in its overlong, winding and cluelessly paced narrative has a lot to do, and as it moves from one appar- ent climax to the next, you might even be Courtesy of Touchstone tempted to put your brain on standby and enjoy the ride. In fact, that's unavoidable after about 15 minutes. "The Guardian" picks you up and shakes you senseless, so that when you leave the theater and a friend asks you about the film, you manage little more than "umm, the film?" It's a generic adventure story with a hackneyed turn to sentiment, but it'll make money as long as the wide base of hydro- phobic movie watchers aren't too scared. And while no one should scream, there are several unintended giggles along the way, especially as Kutcher does his best Leon- ardo DiCaprio by solemnly throwing out the "I'll never let go!" line at the most inop- portune moment. 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