the b-side Thursday, January 25, 2007 - 3B The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com STYLE From page 1B not only from a continuous stack of visual surprises, but from a message that is knit into every plot twist and character rather than tactlessly pasted on. Visual playfulness is, of course, a wor- thy attribute in itself, and even with CGI kids' movies aside 2006 was a year for color. "Little Children's" deep palette offered nighttime shadows as lush as the red of Kate Winslet's bathing suit, "Babel" color-codes the rich landscapes of its vari- ous story lines and Pedro Almodovar's "Volver" is practically a paint-by-numbers done in highlighter. Even the darkest mov- ies offer an opulent gloom, with "Children of Men," "Pan's Labyrinth" and "Letters from Iwo Jima" all as lavishly high-con- trast as they are grim. Ingenuity wasn't absent either. For all the wasted poten- tial of "Stranger than Fiction's" meta-lit- erature concept, director Marc Forster successfully included a series of quick diagram-like pop ups which sporadical- ly appeared onscreen like the scribbled notes of a TV football commentator. If only such style had worked to empha- size an underlying substance, rather than smothering it completely. Take, for exam- ple, "Marie Antoinette," the ultimate les- son in hollow-headed fluff. With director Sofia Coppola's sharp eye for composition, "Marie" boasts cinematography so wispy and light-suffused you'd think you could float through it -- not to mention the mov- ie's impressive array of Barbie-fantasy ballgowns and delicate pastries straight out of a confectioner's wildest dreams. But, like Yimou Zhang's similarly over- long palace-drama "Curse of the Golden Flower," Sofia's royal treatment doesn't dig beneath "Marie's" luxurious surface in any meaningful way. Even Kirsten Dunst's lead performance as the young queen is left solely visual. When she opens her mouth, it's without the barest attempt at a French accent. The year's profusion of other period pieces further played up this image-ori- ented trend. Isn't the venerated "Dream- girls" as much a candy-colored fashion tour of twentieth-century style as it is a musical? But dressing characters like mannequins emphasizes their look over their humanity, and "Dreamgirls's" leads end up feeling like types rather than people. Ditto for Outkast's "Idlewild," for though it revels in the dapper 20s style of its Prohibition-era South, even Andre 3000's flash and bravura can't cover the fact that the film's potential goldmine of a concept is directed with the subtlety of an after-school play. "The Black Dahlia" suffers the same woeful curse, depend- ing so heavily on its sumptuous noir set- ting that it entirely overlooks such measly details as a semi-logical plot. Sure, Scar- lett Johansson and Hilary Swank recall the glamorously wavy-haired starlets of early Hollywood, but that doesn't explain why on earth this movie turns unbearably loony in its final third. There was more to 2006 than just looks, of course, though many trends were simply continuations of long-term tenden- cies. There were more increasingly insipid college-audience offerings ("Employee of the Month," "Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj"), and more quiet, underloved indies ("Half-Nelson," "Conversations with Other Women"). Samuel L. Jackson con- tinued his ascent to Christopher Walken- like cult-status ("Snakes on a Plane"). And our cultural move towards increasingly graphic violence was never more appar- ent than in this year's updated (for better or worse) James Bond, "Casino Royale." Gone are the days when 00/ dodged a henchman's theatrical punch or patiently waited while the latest villain intoned an obviously hollow promise of impend- ing doom. Now James demonstrates an unheard of athleticism chasing a parkour expert through a construction site. Now James-ends up captured and made to suf- fer a beating so unspeakably below-the- belt that it's impossible to picture Sean Connery ev'er submitting himself to it. Many other mini-trends came in pairs -- we got two sets of magicians in turn-of- the-century Europe ("The Illusionist" in Vienna, "The Prestige" in London), two based-on-a-true-story tales of murder- ous Hollywood folklore (an infamously slain prostitute in "The Black Dahlia," the mysterious death of old TV star George Reeves in "Hollywoodland"), two awk- wardly-executed improv-heavy comedies (Christopher Guest's disappointing "For Your Consideration" and the Will Ferrell feature "Talladega Nights"), two Matt Damon films that ran a half-hour two long (Scorsese's slightly bloated "The Depart- ed" and Robert de Niro's unnecessar- ily sprawling "The Good Shepherd"), as well as a second telling of Truman Capo- te's investigation of Holcomb, Kansas ("Infamous," following Philip Seymour Hoffman's triumphant turn in last year's "Capote"). If only style and substance could have composed another trendy pair. Why pull them apart when they complement each other so well? Consider the car-ride scene in Alfonso Cuaron's impressive "Children of Men," a single-shot sequence that builds beautifully upon moment after moment of unpredictable action, only to breeze mov- ingly over its final emotional consequence and segue on into the next scene. It's an expert demonstration of what a movie can truly achieve -- edge-of-your-seat sus- pense and honest engagement with the action and characters onscreen. By com- parison, the merely visual of 2006 isn't enough. We may have been awed, but we want more to be moved. courtesy of s When Penelope Cruz is on screen, you cant look at anything else (subtitles included). TASSI From page lB anything you may have liked about that movie or that show. The suggestion that the story is meant to be "a modern-day fairy tale" is only a cheap way to cover up the dialogue that sounds like it's something out of an ABC Fam- ily movie. We get it: The adult characters act like children, hence the title, but it gets entirely too overbearing. it ultimately climaxes in an absurd scene where the line "Let's run away together" exists in complete seriousness, and to which Kate Winslet giggles and emphati- cally replies "M'kay!" I'm not entirely sure what is supposed to be oscar-worthy about Winslet's performance here. Besides being adept at act- ing like an 8-year-old, she also proves once again that she excels at playing a bored, naive woman who likes to get naked. Not that I'm complaining, of course. She was supposedly slighted when "Titanic" swept the Oscars, hav- ing the dubious honor of being the only person involved in the film not receiving a statue. But if she didn't win for her role in that film, she shouldn't be considered for gold here as she plays the same character aged 10 years. There you have it, now bring on the hate-mail. You have the right to convince me I'm wrong. But I'm not. - E-mail Tassi at tassipumich.edu. Is "Pan's Labyrinth" the new live-action ch KIDS From page 1B ity plays. The G rating today is obso- lete, with the marketplace calling for edgier PG films with more uni- versal appeal. If you can get adults to go, with or without the kids, why not do it? But the live-action children's movie has failed to find its place in this new paradigm, and filmmak- ers with creative aspirations in that direction have simply begun mak- ing their movies for adults. Even the last of the conventional live-action children's franchises, "Harry Potter," has now descended into full-on PG-13 territory,leadingsome in the industry to joke that by the time the seventh and final film is released, an R rating might not be out of the question. That might be going a little far for a franchise valued in the billions of dollars, but looking back on the past year, two movies that might have otherwise been children's prod- ucts are now R-rated films aimed squarely at adults. "Duck Season," a little-seen feature from Mexico, follows two boys who are stranded in an apartment on a Sunday after- noon with no power and nothing to do. The film morphs into a hilarious and at times philosophical tale of the boys as they spend the afternoon ildren's movie? with a pizza guy (who they refuse to pay because he was 11 seconds late) and an older girl one unit over. There are revelations and back stories, weed brownies and personal epiphanies, and the entire time you can't help but shake the feeling that the whole thing is so completely, inescapably adult. I showed the film to my 15-year-old brother, and he responded only to the loss of the video games and the kids getting high. And when I tried to explain the duck metaphor to him, he gave me a bitch-please look and left the room. An even clearer case comes with "Pan's Labyrinth," 2006's best- reviewed movie, which takes a bizarrely imagined fantasy world as its mode for exploring fascism in World War Il-era Spain. In the film, a young girl's adventures in the underworld add a fanciful alle- gorical subtext to the more tradi- tional side of the story. Based on the visual-heavy marketing, a typi- cal moviegoer could be forgiven for mistaking the film for a dark kids' fantasy, although in actuality, it's among the most violent and fright- ening movies of the year. Most reviews, sensing the poten- tial for a younger audience, have been careful to warn parents not to take their kids; Picturehouse, the film's American distributor, has spent a huge number of marketing dollars to encourage the opposite. Yet last Saturday, in an evening screening at an area multiplex, the near-sold-out auditorium was filled with expectant adults. The numbers for the film's expansion out of tradi- tionally art-house-friendly urban centers and into suburban theaters have been strong, and it was just nominated for six Academy Awards, extremely rare for a foreign-lan- guage film. "Pan's Labyrinth" has clearly found an adult audience. Contrast that with, say, "Down- fall," another movie about fascism released last year that was equally well regarded (and even touted by some to be the best movie about Hitler ever made). "Downfall" never expanded from 174 theaters; "Pan's Labyrinth" is already in 609, and last weekend was the No. 7 movie in the nation. It's clear "Pan's Labyrinth" has captured so much attention because of its fantasy elements, although they actually make up a rather small amount of the movie (much more of the story is devoted a fascist general and the grassroots resistance against him than to the advertised world of fauns and fairies). This fantasy outfitting for a conventional adult tale paired with the film's smash- ing success make "Pan's" a textbook example of how to satisfy the cre- ative hunger left in the absence of youthful live-action stories. While animated movies now strive to bring in alldemographics, live-action mov- ies about kids might begin to give up entirely on a younger audience. It's far too early to see if movies like these will continue to thrive, and live-action blockbusters like "Night atthe Museum" arestillbigat the box office among young people. But as kid-centric movies starring real kids living real lives become increasingly rare, it seems a logical direction for the genre to go. And maybe that's OK. With innovations in 3D animation alone guarantee- ing the continued attendance of the coveted adolescent demographic, and adults with HDTVs simultane- ously fleeing the multiplex setting, any creative movement that can help preserve the theatrical experi- ence is worthy of exploration. DAILY ARTS. MASS MEETING MONDAY AT 730 P.M. AT 413 E. HURON. COME. WE MIGHT NOTICE. FEBRUA AARY SPECTAL , S 0 f'nyCas Cr VIN'YASA ASANGA WYo 9 a C ti l pr a C ti.C e -3 id i tis , 245)W .Staditutm (734) 21,6- 6 I ST TU DIE NI D I S C NT a 2 oga. oIn D001 Oy M1 Fenro.'s II C o !S s I I