a
2B - Thursday, January 3, 2008 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom
REDUCTIVE REASONING
Picking one and one apart.
ADENR'BILL AND TED EXCELLENT
ADVENTURE' 09$9)
4
Today 1.03.08
Bill Hildebrandt Comedy
8 p.m.
Ann Arbor Comedy Showcase
$5 in Advance/ $7 at the Door
Deastro, Javelins!, Childbite
and Friendly Foes
9:30 p.m.
At the Blind Pig
$5/Under 21, $8/18+
Tomorrow 1.04.08
Yellow Room Gang
8 p.m.
At The Ark
$15
Faculty Recital: Adam
Unsworth, Horn
8 P.m.
E.V. Moore Building Britton Recital Hall
Free
Ann Arbor Soul Club
9:30 p.m.
At the Blind Pig
$5/Under 21, $8/18+
Saturday 1.05.08
Third Dissertation Recital:
Stephen Lancaster, Baritone
2 p.m.
E.V. Moore Building Britton Recital Hall
Free
RFD Boys
At The Ark
$11
Sunday 1.06.08
Charles E. Owen Memorial
Percussion Masterclass:
Chris Deviney
6 p.m.
E.V. Moore Building McIntosh Theatre
Free
Melvin Taylor
7:30 p.m.
At The Ark
$15
Please send all press releases
and event information to
artspage@michigandaily.com.
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HOLIDAY ROUND-UP
Bill and Ted,' the
timeless classic
4
Who partied with whom to welcome in the
New Year?
Lucky you if you were in LA and able to get
into the HARD New Year's Eve party. Justice
manned the decks and Peaches worked the
stage. Good times, we hear. Too bad we fell
asleep watching Dick Clark's Rockin' Eve,
empty bottle of Andre clutched in our
hot little hands.
But in another part of town,
Kevin Federline was seen "chat-
ting intimately" with Paris Hil-
ton at a Mensa meeting over the
weekend - just kidding, at LA
club Lax.
Ex-wife Britney - divorce 4
newly finalized - spent New Year's
day with paparazzo boytoy Adnan
Ghalib, kids and court-appointed moni-
tor in tow. Her new photog pal is reportedly
married, according to OK! Magazine, and the
tabloid must be reliable - it broke
the news about kid sister Jamie
Lynn's pregnancy after all.
Nicole Kidman and Keith
Urban are still denying that
they're in the family way,
though rumors said they
told their families over
Christmas that they were
expecting.
ButTyraBanksannounced
that she's planning to adopt a
child. Orphanages around the
world, ready yourselves.
And Leonardo DiCaprio is
reportedly back with Israeli
model Bar Rafaeli. Sigh. The cou-
ple was spotted holding hands all
over Hollywood before Christmas.
By PAUL TASSI
Daily Film Editor
Time travel movies never make
sense.
Now hear me, I'm not saying
that time travel movies suck. I love
"Back to the Future" as much as the
next guy, but in terms of the con-
cept of going back in time, chang-
ing something, and coming back to
a different (or not different) future
has never clicked with me.
Take the "Terminator" series
for example. Three times Arnold
came back to change the future,
and three times nothing ended up
happening - the robots still blew
everything up. Don't pretend to
know what happened in "Donnie
Darko," either. You're lying. And
don't even get me started on "The
Lake House."
The point to be made is that it's
nearly impossible to craft a cohe-
sive storyline involving time travel.
Thank God the geniuses behind
"Bill and Ted's Excellent Adven-
ture" realized this. Armed with an
unknown cast, a preposterous sto-
ryline and special effects that look
suspiciously like Microsoft screen-
savers, they managed to turn it all
into something classic.
The plot is simple enough. Two
slackers have to write a history
paper, a guy from the future shows
up in a time-traveling phone booth,
they go back in time to kidnap his-
torical figures to give their reports
for them. And then Bill and Ted
play these really weird guitars at
Pills" and "Bros" layer sampleupon
sample, and then just seem to grow
organically in different directions.
It's pop with patience. Rarely does
an album sound so studied in its
creation, yet immediate in its lis-
tening. This was the best album
in the spring - and now, as bitter
winds keep us sheltered indoors, it
fits even better.
GABRIEL BAKER
5. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are
You the Destroyer?
In 2005, Of Montreal's Kevin
Barnes got himself so depressed
E-mail artseditors@umich.eduf---
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3. M.I.A. - Kala
Don't mistake M.I.A.'s pop sensi-
bilities for aestheticvapidness. The
British-SriLankan artistkicked off
2007 with one of the year's most
musically diverse offerings, with-
out compromisingthebold political
message she delivered on her 2005
debut Arular. Kala takes liteners
from the disco streets of the Bolly-
wood scene ("Jimmy") to the world
of psychedelic '80s new-wave pop
("20 Dollar") to the unmentionable
atrocities of third-world genocide
("Hussel") and then back to con-
temporary Top 25-friendly Lon-
don ("Come Around"). On "Paper
Planes," she samples a series of
disturbing gunshots, juxtaposed
by the cha-ching of a cash register,
overpowering an innocent chorus
of chanting children. What message
is M.I.A. tryingto send? You decide.
In the meantime, M.I.A.'s addic-
tive beats and powerful melodies
are entrenching her well-deserved
place in modern music.
SASHA RESENDE
4. Panda Bear - Person Pitch
I don't really care about The
Beach Boys. I know they suppos-
edly wrote the book on white-male
vocal harmonies and their music is
more complex than your average
pop confection. The bottom line:
Though Panda Bear often draws
comparisons to the famed surf-
rockers, you don't have to love
The Beach Boys or be some kind of
music scholar to enjoy Panda Bear.
Person Pitch is a spiraling hypnotic
album filled withlush melodies and
buoyant rhythms. Songs like "Take
the end making them some sort of
demi-gods in the future. 4
Sure yanking people like Abra-
ham Lincoln and Genghis Khan
out of history might you know,
alter the future, but we don't care
in "Bill and Ted." Thankfully, logic
has almost all but been left out of
the film, leaving us only with clas-
sic moments like Napolean frolick-
Keanu Reeves:
the early years.
ing in a water park and calling the
great Greek thinker "So-crates."
The movie starts with a then
unknown Keanu Reeves and the
still unknown Alex Winter. Both
perform adequately as the prede-
cessors to stars of stoner buddy
comedies such as "Dude, Where's
My Car?" or "Harold & Kumar
Go to White Castle." Even though
this is arguably Reeves best roles,
he has gone on to more box office
success, if not critical acclaim. And
Alex Winter? I think there was a
kid in my high school named Alex
Winter. That's all I've got.
Modern comedies have a lot to
learn from "Bill and Ted." It is a
"journey" movie A la "Road Trip"
and "EuroTrip," but it breaks from
traditional shenanigans to incor-
porate time travel and a subsequent
smattering of historical icons. Sure,
the entire journey might have actu-
ally been in their heads as some
sort of mushroom trip, but does
that really matter at this point?
that he sold the track "Wraith
Pinned To The Mist (And Other
Games)" to Outback Steakhouse.
While the wisdom of that decision 4
is debatable, the quality of Hissing
Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?, the
other product of his depression,
is not. An honest-to-God con-
cept album, Fauna tells the story
of Barnes' descent with striking
clarity - at one point, he begs 4
his own serotonin for help. The
record's upbeat electropop belies
its thematic darkness, but rein-
forces the chemical denial of the
lyrics.
MATT RONEY
6. Battles - Mirrored
If there was ever any doubt
that the members of Battles were
hyper-intelligent androids sent
from the far reaches of the Har-
mony Galaxy, Mirrored erases
it. Every moment of the metallic
melodies is executed with laser
precision while the group simul-
taneously layers incoherent vocal
lines to the mix, pushing the
album farther toward an other-
worldly realm. And yet, with an 4
album so alien, it seems comfort-
ingly familiar, fitting squarely
in the evolving indie-/art-rock
scene. Lead single "Atlas" rides
the danciest bounce this side of
Timbaland while the poles "Race:
In" and "Race: Out" bookend the d
disc with sheer adrenaline and
heart-racing percussion. Where
they come from is irrelevant.
They're here now.
CHRIS GAERIG
See ALBUMS, Page 4B
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