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The Michigan Daily I michigandaily.com ( Thursday, Nc
The Daily Arts
guide to the best
upcoming events
- it's everywhere
you should be this
weekend and why.
ON STAGE
Groove, a 30-member
percussion ensemble,
boasts that its members
can draw frantic beats
using sticks, trashcans
and whatever else they
can get their hands on.
The group returns for its
fifth major event with
a set at The Michigan
Theater Friday. Tickets
are $5 with student 1D.
AT THE ARK
Nominated for a Grammy
for his 2006 album
Workbench Songs, Guy
Clark will croon at The
Ark Saturday, bringing
with him a smoky voice,
his guitar and deep-
seated blues, folk and
Americana influences.
Tickets are $30.
Sean Brennan of Ann Arbor prepares to clean a cask at the Jolly Pumpkin Brewery in Dexter. The Jolly Pumpkin uses oak casks to mature its beer.
A little
of the big
city in A 2
By ANNIE LEVENE
Daily Arts Writer
Walk through the glass doors and
down the wooden paneled stairway,
grab a seat at the bar, chill in the lounge
or settle into a 7-foot-tall booth tucked
into the wall of the main dining room.
It seems like a dining experience typi-
cal of any large city, but Melange Bistro
and Wine Bar is a few blocks away ftom
Central Campus, a big-city restaurant
in downtown Ann Arbor.
The restaurant, which opened a little
more than a year ago, is managed by
Terry Martin. It's the 10th restaurant
Martin has opened in the metropolitan
area, but Melange, he said, is "hipper
(and) sleeker." With the support of the
owners, Martin takes more chances
with the restaurant, like adding sushi
to the already different, contemporary,
subterranean-based menu. Martin said
the opportunity to work with "a hope-
fully pretty cool regular menu and then
sushi as well - in the same building
- is pretty fun for me."
The addition of sushi to M6lange's
menu came with the arrival of Sam
Ness, a chef who once worked for New
York City's Nobu, the celebrity-infested
Japanese restaurant and sushi bar cre-
ated in part by the chef Nobu Matsuhi-
sa and the actor Robert De Niro. Ness,
who Martin declared "a tremendously
talented man," was recruited by one of
M6lange's owners to serve as a tempo-
rary executive chef before becoming
more of a consultant for the restaurant.
Ann Arbor's food scene is home to
several popular food blogs (check out
kitchenchick.com), and wine-tast-
ing events have become commonplace
at many restaurants like Vinology on
Main Street. But Martin sees M61ange
as a restaurant that encourages further
experimentation of different styles and
flavors of foods, aiming to be "just a lit-
See MELANGE, Page 4B
S f i%1L${ b
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ON SCREEN
The Iranian Society Series
is screening "Infidels
and The Wind Will
Carry Us," an Iranian
documentary about its
Animism-believing gypsy
minority and this group's
forced conversion to
Islam during the Iranian
Revolution. The film will
be shown at the Rackham
Amphitheater Sunday.
The event is free.
It's existential. You just don't know that.
Want to shock? Let them live
Warning: This article discusses
key plotpoints ofseveral
recentfilms.
By JEFFREY BLOOMER
Managing Editor
in the final moments of Frank
Darabont's "The Mist," the "Shaw-
shank" director's bid at a Stephen
King-fueled redemption of his
own,there seems tobe some solace
in store for the characters. After
a days-long assault from a host
of prehistoric monsters in a tiny
Maine supermarket (among them
pterodactyls, a scorpion the size
of a jet and Marcia Gay Harden),
our dutiful hero and his shrinking
band of sane-minded survivors
rush away from the store. With a
fleeting sense of hope, they drive
south into the milky white cloud
that gives the film its title.
Up until that point, the movie
had freely killed characters typi-
cally off limits, including a sweet
grocery clerk who dies suddenly
from a sting that makes her throat
look like a watermelon. But now
the survivors drive through the
mist, away from that, and they
fisally seem at peace.
Then it begins. David Day-
ton, played stolidly by Thomas
Jane, trolls up the driveway of
his quaint lakeside home and
finds his wife wrapped in a spider
web. He mutters to himself, and
after obligatory point-and-shoot
looks of grief, the group drives on,
intent to go as far as it can.
It's not long before the old
truck chugs its final drop of gas.
The mist still surrounds them.
There's no sign of anyone else.
The ticks of ravenous monsters
begin to close in.
David pulls out a pistol. "There
are only four bullets left," he says.
But there are five people in the
car, besides him an old woman,
an old man, a pretty teacher and
David's grade-school son, who
begins to awake from a nap. The
old man says they gave it their
best shot - "no one can say we
didn't," he reassures nobody in
particular - and with that, as the
boy's eyes open with just enough
time to see his father point the
pistol in the direction of his head,
the camera cuts to the outside of
the truck. There are four gun-
shots that make it clear David has
shot everyone but himself.
And right then, afterssuggestive
sounds from the blurry wilder-
ness that surrounds him, a mili-
tary force emerges from the mist.
It's a quarantine team collecting
survivors and exterminating the
last of the creatures. David has
killed his only child for nothing.
Roll credits.
Get it? It's daring! It's existen-
tial! It's ... meaningless. I sat on
this for a while, because unlike
many others (including the Dai-
ly's critic, who said the movie
"stalls in a succession of mud
puddles"), I found the better part
of "The Mist" an inspired slate of
creature-feature horrors. If not
useful as a moral exercise, it is as a
play on a classic genre clich6 - sic
monsters on townsfolk! - and it
works as a simple, progressively
nasty thriller.
Better yet, "The Mist" know-
ingly tempers its allegorical ambi-
tion so that it doesn't undercut the
value of the spectacle (even when
the resident religious fanatic
takes over, her inevitable human
sacrifice quickly becomes mon-
ster food), at least until the cruel,
greedy conclusion. Darabont
is so desperate to make us sick
with apocalyptic anxiety that le
wakes the little boy just before his
father shoots him so we kw he
saw what was coming to him. The
zeal with which Darabssst esters
the military saviors ciretly after
immediately gives hues awscy: This
is a stunt. Itbetrays the characters
See HORROR. Page 4B
AT THE
PODIUM
The University Art
Museum presents "A Day
With(out) Art" Saturday,
a day of commemoration
to raise awareness about
the effects of AIDS,
especially on artistic
communities. Guest,
speaker and renowned
poet Robert Hass will be
reading at the Rackham
Ampitheatre at 4 p.m.
The event is free.