4B - Thursday, October 25, 2007

4

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

KLEIN
From page 3B
background knowledge (though
the Daily ran its own photo).
But overall, online journalism is
the aggregation flagship.And while
some are content to analyze what's
printed, others use that analysis as
the basis for original reporting.
Talking Points Memo is a superb
combination of aggregation and
original reporting. The site broke
open Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's
unethical involvement in a land
deal. Within days the story went
national. In a profile on Talking
Points Memo by David Glenn at the
Columbia Journalism Review, he
described the situation: "It was not
the crude hit-and-run that skeptics
of political blogs sometimes say
they fear."
Sure, blogs have the freedom
to spout whatever they want, and
it can be hurtful - detrimental,
even - to a public that can't always
make the distinction between
opinion and reporting. But the
minds behind sites such as Talk-
ing Points Memo understand that
in order to command legitimate
attention, they're going to have to
adhere to the same principles that
underlie newspapers: citing facts,
grounding opinions with solid
proof and so forth.
And while it is fair to point out
that sites like TPM are exceptions
in a field of hundreds of thousands
of blogs, that notion overlooks
the collective power of the blogo-

sphere. CBS anchor Dan Rather
was rather publicly humiliated and
lost his job when dogged bloggers
proved the documents he used to
question George W. Bush's mili-
tary service were revealed to be
fakes: Whistle blowing, however
uncomfortable it is when you're on
the receiving end, is something we
can never have enough of
Both blogs andnewspapers have
their hang-ups. The better ones
Understanding
the differences:
they don't matter.
know that some sort of symbiotic
relationship is necessary. What
would TMP talk about if there
weren't a Washington Post or New
York Times? With newspapers and
magazines facing dwindling bud-
gets and downsizing, who's going
to hold them accountable?
Let's all take a deep breath, set
up a Google Reader account with
RSS feeds from The New York
Times, The Superficial, Daily
Kos, Talking Points Memo and
The Drudge Report and see for
ourselves where the line between
online and print blurs to the point
of irrelevance.
- Klein had a blog for about two
days before he decided he couldn't
handle the stress. Encourage
him at andresar@umich.edu.

Hubbard: a different dance company

By ABIGAIL B. COLODNER
Fine Arts Editor
Ben Johnson, the University Musical Soci-
ety's director of education and audience devel-
opment, said the society
rarely offers a performance Hubbard
by the same dance company Steet
three nights in a row.
But the arts presenter Dance
pushed hard for an entire Chio
weekend of performances by
the Chicago-based contempo- Today,
rary dance company Hubbard tomorrow
StreetDanceChicago,starting and Saturday
tonight at the Power Center at 8$p.m.
with an 8 p.m. performance $10-$48
of pieces choreographed by
creative star Twyla Tharp, At the Power
current company dancers and Center
the company's director.
Johnson said Hubbard Street is one of UMS's
favorite guests, and a fairly frequent one. The
company last appeared at the Power Center in
February for a single night of dance.
The repertoire company's modus operandi,
an amalgam of dance styles and choreography
whose origins and goals vary by piece, seems a
natural fit for Ann Arbor's arts presenter. The
company's visit has a sense of regional loy-
alty as well as international variety, since its
works pointedly incorporate diverse influences
- much along the lines of UMS's philosophy in
bringing eclectic performers to Ann Arbor.
Also like UMS, Hubbard Street aims to
impress. Press and reviews of the company,
whose 30th anniversary is this year, describe
the group as athletic, exuberant and virtuosic.
Johnson, himself a fan of the company, said
this weekend in particular will be an exciting
one to attend. The company comes to Ann Arbor
recently having finished its season in Chicago.
"At the end-of (its) Chicago season, it's usu-
ally the best of those pieces that come to the
Michigan tour," he said.
It's not only audience members who can look
forward to the six works presented this week-
end. Hubbard Street dancer Shannon Alvis, an
tional pain.

Three nights of this? Fabulous.
Indianapolis native in her seventh year with
the company, said in a telephone interview that
she has her own reasons for enjoying this run
in particular.
"They brought back a personal favorite of
mine, Twyla Tharp's 'Baker's Dozen,' which I'd
seen before I was inthe company," she said. "It's
a visit back to old-school Hubbard Street."
One constant in a company that switches up
styles and creative direction - not only sea-
son-to-season but within performances - is
the training of its dancers. All the dancers are
classically trained in ballet, which lends any
dance form a foundation of precise technical
skill. Viewers familiar with dance performanc-
es should sense how this allows a company to
stand out from other modern and contempo-
rary dance groups. The shared training is likely
what enables the company to vary its material
so consistently without losing its professional-
ism.
Companies like Hubbard Street break with
traditional ballet in many ways, some of them
less obvious than the different steps used.

"One thing that I like about Hubbard Street
is that there are maybe 20 dancers onstage, but
we each have our role," Alvis said. "Rather than
it beinga corps and one soloist, you see a strong
group of individuals."
Jim Vincent, Hubbard Street's artistic direc-
tor since 2000, worked in the Netherlands,
Spain and France before joining the Chicago
company. Johnson said these European, rather
than American, roots stand out in Hubbard
Street's general treatment of its dances and of
the dancers' bodies.
"In America, we take dance and separate
it from everything. In Europe, it's thought of
more as choreography - they look at theater
and dance and movement and how they relate
to each other," he said.
Alvis explained her sense of what drives Hub-
bard Street, which initially sounds like a com-
plex beast given the number of creative sources
it uses each performance: "Basically anything
can happen. We're not stuck to one idea - we
want to bring new and exciting things to the
stage, whatever those may be."

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SCARY
From page 1B
his body.
SHERI JANKELOVITZ
"PEEPING TOM" (1960)
Featuring a serial killer who
films his murders and then watches
footage of the crimes, this psycho-
logical thriller provides more than
the modern flick's quota of gore
and extreme violence. In a simi-
lar yet twisted vein of Hitchcock's
masterpiece "Rear Window,"
which turned the audience into the
protagonist's willing accomplice,
"Peeping Tom" forces the viewerto
become the murderer. In the film,
the method of killingis as secretive
as the origins of the man's emo-

MITCHELL AKSELRAD
"SCREAMERS" (1995)
Philip K. Dick's work produced
"Blade Runner" and "Total Recall."
But in 1995, his short story "Second
Variety" was the source material
for what would become one of the
dumbest-sounding - though scary
in its own right - movies of the
'90s: "Screamers." A blend of sci-fi
and horror, the movie is the story
of an American military crew on
an abandoned planet threatened
by man-made machines that have
evolved beyond the control of their
creators. You'll scream ... ers.
NOAH DEAN STAHL
"CACHE" (2005)
A friend told me that every

time he watches a film by Michael
Haneke, everything starts to go
wrong. t don't doubt it. The French
auteur of "Benny's Video" (which
opens with a video of a pig being
slaughtered) and "Funny Games"
(just look it up) has a way of making
you feel like you're the last person
on Earth, and "Cache" does no less.
A Parisian couple begins to receive
unexplained packages with videos
of them shot by an apparent voyeur,
and the mysteries they suggest cut
into France's colonialist past.
JEFFREYBLOOMER
"THE WITCHES" (1990)
After watching Miss Eva Ernst
(a badass Anjelica Huston) pulling
off her wig and shoes to reveal the
nastiness that is the Grand High
Witchinthefilmadaptationof"The


Witches," kindly older women will
never look the same. And a plot to
transform kids into mice via choco-
late with a devious-potion-filled
center? Nothing scares kids more
this time of year than someone
messing with their candy.
ANNIE LEVENE
"BATTLE ROYALE" (2000)
There's something exceedingly
disturbing about watching a class
of Japanese eighthgraderssetupon
each other. And this isn't a school-
yard scuffle. The kids are dropped
on an island, given weapons like
hatchets and hand grenades and
told the last kid left alive will be
allowed to leave. And people say
"Kid Nation" is bad. Please.
PAUL TASSI
"WHOCAN KILL A CHILD?"(1976)
Batshitchildrenhavelongbeena
touchstone of horror, but not quite
like this. A.University professor of
all people introduced me to this
one, in which a British couple vaca-
tions on an island where the kids
kill all the adults. Dark Sky Films
released the Spanish nightmare
in a new DVD last summer, and
there's nothing like a nice transfer
to enhance a climactic sequence
unkind to the little ones.
JEFFREYBLOOMER
"FEAR" (1996)
Mark Wahlberg. Reese With-
erspoon. 1996. Is there anything
else?Nicole Walker (Witherspoon)
lives in one of those isolated castle
homes with a private security sys-
tem, yet somehow David McCall
(Wahlberg) manages to sneak
his way through ... to her panties.
If you're looking for a rom-com-
turned-horror this weekend, this
drama/horror/thriller/whatever
is the movie for you.
NORA FELDHUSEN
"SHIVERS" (1975)
David Cronenberg described
"Shivers" as "a Canadian sex zom-
bie movie." Thatrpretty muchsums
it up: An isolated highrise is invad-
ed by parasites that turn their car-
riers into sex-starved zombies.
Though it's way too creepy and
weird to be sexy, there is plenty
of zombie action, with the sort of
gruesome F/X and bizarre obses-
sion over the human anatomy that
became Cronenberg's hallmarks.
BRANDON CONRADIS
"HIGH TENSION" (2003)
After arriving at her friend's
country house, Alexa settles in to
a relaxing vacation with a friend's
family. They're in the middle of
nowhere. Shortly after everyone
goes to sleep, the doorbell rings. A
man answers the door only to be
maimed. A mysterious and per-
verted man begins to lay waste to
the rest of the family. A pursuit
begins. It's all here: adolescent
anxiety, isolation and good old-
fashioned insanity for insanity's
sake. A psychotic killer in the
shadows with an undisclosed
background and an inexplicable
motive: That's scary.
ELIE ZWIEBEL