The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Tuesday, March 25, 2008-5

Exposure for the
unexposed

A long time ago in a galaxy far,
far away, the evil Empire - we'll
call it Hollywood - was wag-
ing war against the Rebel forces
known as independent filmmakers.
It was a long
and bitter fight,
but even rebels,
apparently,
can't resist the
temptation
of lucrative
merchandis-
ing deals and
a well-stocked
Kraft service _______
table. A hun-
dred-odd years into the struggle, it
seems independent filmmakers are
no more.
This hard fact has been more
than evident in the past few years.
Walking into any local "indepen-
dent theater," a patron is immedi-
ately greeted by movie posters for
films about as independent from
the Hollywood system as Tibet is
from China. Take, for example,
the recent Academy Award winner
"Juno." Now, we all loved "Juno"
(right?). It was cute, quirky and,
most importantly, edgy without
being offensive - a true hallmark
of modern indie features. But it
wasn't truly independent. "Juno"
was distributed by Fox Search-
light, a subsidiary of 20th Century
Fox. Calling anything owned by
20th Century Fox "independent"
is about as contradictory as you
get. But that didn't stop the Film
Independent's Spirit Awards from
showering "Juno" with awards
- the industry equivalent of the
Grammys giving a Best New Artist
nomination to Feist, even though
she'd been releasing albums for
years. Oh wait - they just did that.
It seems like there really isn't
a true independent movement in
cinema anymore. Many people
point to the fact that Hollywood
has always dominated the Ameri-
can film market, but there's always
been an underground movement to
counteract it. From the surrealism
of Maya Deren's shorts ("Meshes
of the Afternoon") to the doo-
wop-infused insanity of Kenneth
Anger ("Scorpio Rising"), fringe
filmmakers have always been
eager to cast their damning eyes
- and rigid middle fingers - to
the frothy banality of mainstream
Hollywood.
One of the most well-respected
American filmmakers of the 20th
Century, for example, was John
Cassavetes, perhaps the defini-
tion of an independent filmmaker.
Cassavetes worked with estab-
lished actors, screened his films

at all the famous festivals and
was nominated for Oscars, but he
did it all while working outside
of the system. And when he did
work in Hollywood, it was to make
moneyto use on his subsequent
underground projects, such as
"A Woman Under the Influence"
(1974) or "Opening Night" (1977),
most of which were shot in true
guerrilla style on the streets of
L.A. and New York.
Other filmmakers, like Robert
Downey Jr. and Russ Meyer, used
similar tactics to churn out their
own highly personal, and not
always commercial, pet projects.
These kinds of filmmakers still
exist today, but what they lack is
both exposure and organization.
That's where the Ann Arbor
Film Festival comes in. While
most, ahem, "indie" filmmakers
are making sappy, streamlined
Why it's important
to appreciate the
films you might not
understand
junk, certain artists are still will-
ing to go out on a limb and make
films that are truly audacious and
irreverent. This is something to
be celebrated. Even if 80 percent
of the short avant-garde films on
display over the course of the next
week make absolutely no sense to
you, simply admire the fact that
these filmmakers are trying to
startle you, motivate you or, at the
very least, get some kind of hon-
est reaction out of you, something
most commercial films today seem
unwilling to do.
And while we're at it, let's give
these so-called independent films
a new name, shall we? Because
they're not independent films -
they're "alternative" films. They're
safe films that make people think
they're watching something
audacious simply because they're
slightly skewered from the typi-
cal Hollywood mindset of babes
and bombs. But don't fool yourself,
They're just as calculated, just as
manipulative andoften just as dis-
honest as any of those silly action
movies many people claim to hate
for the same reasons.
- Conradis is just bitter that
people have heard of "Juno." E-mail
him at brconrad@umich.edu

Even more baller than they look.

So vulgar, so good,

Indie heroes return with
the second season of their
mocking, energetic comedy
By MATT EMERY
Associate Arts Editor
After Aziz Ansari became the comic of
the indie-music world when he starred in
the Internet video "Clell Tickle," "Human
Giant" looked like a great call - a show
capitalizing on indie cul-
ture and eliciting the help
of two other fine sketch
comedians, Rob Huebel Human
("Late Night with Conan G.n
O'Brien") and Paul Scheer Git
("Best Week Ever"). More Tuesday
thananythingelse,though, 11 p.m.
the show appeared to be a MTV
college music-flavored jolt
of energy to MTV's lineup
of Hollywood drama shows and programs
about everything from the joys of choosing
a date to dating a mom.
But distinguishing whether the first sea-
son of "Human Giant" was actually a valid
sketch comedy show was no easy task. Sure,
there were some really great skits that
included rollerblading and having to out
yourself to your parents, axe attacks in the
wilderness and a couple of guys who run a
cutthroat children's talent agency. But was
the show actually funny, or was just a sign
of MTV's desire to keep such talent on the
fledgling "music" network?
Well, we now have season two to really

clear things up, and thus far, it's clear the
show is often hilarious. However, much like
last season, most or all of the comedy relies
on blood, violence, blood, sexism, over-the-
top sex and, um, lots of blood. The show
doesn't walk the line of decency - it tromps
across the line with its pants around its
ankles, shouting obscenities and urinating
on little children along the way.
The opening sketch - the first "viral"
video that surfaced on the web for season
two - features a man cutting off his penis
on his webcam to gain Internet views. The
show doesn't take more than 10 seconds
to get gruesome. The scene becomes truly
hilarious when Ansari - playing a similar
viral mega-star who makes insipid faces that
garner more hits - makes his appearance
alongside the genital-less man on a CNN-
esque interview of the two web celebrities.
Another sketch features a reenactment of 'a
reenactment on a reality-type crime show.
Again, blood flows at a grotesque regularity,
but-it's stillgreat to see spirited, ridiculous
ideas come through with more than just a
chuckle.
They're towing a tough line most of the
time, but if you can enjoy the mockery of
political correctness for a while, things
become a lot more bearable. The Illusion-
ators - one of the funnier, repeating skits
from the first season - return with more
unfeasible tricks. Messing up their first
trick, they accidentally and magically
write the n-word on the belly of a man on
the street. The Illusionators then have to
apologize to the entire black community
one by one, and enlist the help of a black
Illusionator to smooth things over. Again,

they're pretty damn offensive, but the
comedic timing and mockery of our politi-
cally-correct culture is more refreshing
than usual.
At other times, the group has good ideas,
but can't quite push them far enough. In one
skit, the three men star in a public service
announcement for little kids, telling them
not to get into a big white van with strang-
ers, even though it's clear that they're the
biggestthreat to the children. Onlya drawn-
out text-over on screen makes the scene
unpredictable. In another skit, the group
subtly mocks makeover shows when Huebel
assumes the role of a disgusting, monstrous
creature from the fictitious sci-fi show
"Battle Sector 17." The makeup would take
hours toput on, so to become the character,
Huebel undergoes a full makeover instead.
But, of course, the show gets canceled and
h9 tuck. Not exactly original.
The ghost of a gay porn star named
Bruce Penis, a skit about a show featuring
a-hildren running a penitentiary and a hor-
ribly vulgar sex tape starring Will Arnett?
"Human Giant" isn't "Saturday Night Live,"
and if you're younger than 30, that's prob-
ably a good thing. They're vulgar, crude and
frank, but also downright hilarious. The star
power of the troupe certainly helps (guest
stars have included Ghostface Killah, Andy
Samberg, Jonah Hill and Brian Posehn),
and if the comics work to keep their ideas
fresh and relevant, the show will certainly
maintain its cult following and maybe gain
a grouping of others. The blood might grow
old after a while, but hopefully other, better
skits will find a spot to replace the raging
violence. Or at least another guest star.


Incoherency at its best
By DAVID WATNICK close-country harmonies and saloon phrenic mental imagery of Neutral and all, the bracing near-power pop
Daily Arts Writer piano of "Open the Door Lucille" are Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over of fourth track "Jetway Junior"
of The Band. If new wave is typically the Sea in vibrant Technicolor. The would've been the first-track knock-

An album's opening line is a
prime piece of creative real estate -
but that didn't stop the members of
Head of Femur, humble artists that
they are, from following the tradi-
tion of classical
Greek literature J
and sacrificing
Great Plains's first Head of
words for an invo- Femur
cationofthe muse.
Certainly, there Great Plains
must be some Greyday
symbolic signifi-
cance in the line,
which says "She's a mother to us all/
from a tavern down the street." But
I'm going to be perfectly honest: If
it's there, it's lost on me. Regard-
less, if opening track "Whirlaway"
has any light to shed on the album,
it's that we're all in for one hell of
a disorienting ride. And not in a
beer-drinking drunk way. This is
like doingspeed. Or acid.
Great Plains demands a bul-
let-biting, fear-conquering reck-
lessness. When followed with
unconditional trust, the album's
irregular rhythms, elusive
melodicism and unconventional
instrumentation all possess a cap-
tivating pull that they should, by
their nature, preclude themselves
from owning.
To distill this album down to a
genre classification would be doing
it a disservice - but for argument's
sake, let's do it anyway. The album
is new wave meets Americana.
plus horns and strings. Sure, those
labels lack a tangible specificity, but
the uncomfortably anxious pacing
of title track "Great Plains" is as
reminiscent of The Feelies as the

tense, then the tension resulting connotation of incoherency is, of out that "Whirlaway," pleasant as it

from this synergistic encounter with
Americana is so apparent that it's
opaque. The duality hits especially
hard on the closer "Isn't ita Shame,"
where menacing organ licks straight
out of Elvis Costello's This Year's
Model surrender to warm, fuzzy,
earthy choruses.
True to the precedent set in
"Whirlaway," the album's remain-
ing lyrics never really take a firm
hold in coherency. Passing referenc-
es to imaginary characters "The Dr.
Pepper Boy" and "Jetway Junior"
reframe the sepia-toned schizo-

Americana and acid
aren't always bad
course, historically negative, but
given the semi-fractured musical
structures with which the lyrics
sync, the combination is far from
effective.
Sadly, the only true failing here
is sequencing, a thread all too com-
mon in the post-LP age. False start

is, could never be. Meanwhile, the
album-typifying closer "Isn't it a
Shame" would've fit best inthe mid-
dle of the album. The epic, elegiac
"Covered Wagons," which seems
to come out of nowhere at track six,
would've been a far more profound
cap on the album.
This album is a blender - it
mixes speeds and other elements.
The ride is scattershot, but some-
times unevenness and unpre-
dictability can invigorate an
experience. Great Plains is excel-
lent proof of that.

I - I

I

""Saw