8A - Wednesday, March 26, 2008

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

From the Ann Arbor film festival
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A NIGHT OF PRIDE AND CELEBRATION

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Some useful
guidance

By BLAKE GOBLE
Daily Arts Writer
There were baby boomers as far as the
eye couldsee, discussing censorship and the
Bush administration. Thick-rimmed spec-
tacles could be seen on almost every patron,
and glasses of Ann Arbor Brewing Compa-
ny wine were in every hand. The swish of
tweed coats and philosophical debate over
art and culture could be overheard every-
where. A general sense of relief permeated
as people rejoiced after great strife.
No, it wasn't a Democratic Convention
afterparty.
It was the Ann Arbor Film Festival's
opening night, and what an event it was.
The Michigan Theater played host to the
46th-annual gathering, hosting a gala
reception complete with posh swankiness
for those in attendance. Elation was in the
air as hundreds converged at the historic
theater to partake in another year of inde-
pendent film screenings, featuring 11 dif-
ferent pieces on opening night.
MC'd by Michigan Theater CEO Russell
Collins,the show began with openingstate-
ments from Ann'Arbor mayor John Hieftje
and the Festival's executive director Chris-
ten McArdle,. All had spirited comments
on this year's event. Hieftje boasted of the
festival's international status as one the
"top 10 film festivals in the world," praising
its notoriety within Ann Arbor and world-
wide. He even joked about a "website that

says we're overrated." Of course, everyone
disagreed.
All laughs aside, McArdle set the scene
when she took to the main theater stage. A
film festival veteran and new organizer for
the AAFF, McArdle was as bluntas she was
gracious. "We've been through a little bit...
in the last two years," she said. "It was not
an easy year for us. This censorship contro-
versy almost put us out of business. Point
blank." The AAFF has been embroiled in a
first amendment lawsuit, threatening the
loss of state funding. But with the support
of countless individuals and a win in the
festival's court case, the show was able to
go on this year.
As McArdle added in her opening
remarks, the beauty of the festival is that
it serves as a forum for groundbreak-
ing, truthful and difficult films. When
people can unite to collectively engage in
the obscure and unheard of the sensation
is exhilarating. Underdogs all got their
chances to present last night, and they
didn't disappoint.
With Michael Langan's "Doxology," the
festival truly kicked into gear. Combining
oblique humor with religion, tennis and
carrots, the short was a brilliant taste of the
wild variety that ensued. "Yours Truly,"
by Osbert Parker, enthralled the audience
with its creative stop-motion techniques
mixed with gory revisionist noir. "Frog
Jesus" acted as the night's biggest punch
line, eliciting big laughs as the two-minute

segmentcaptured ayoungboy's fascination
with crucifying a frog.
Heartfelt drama and re-edited home-
made imagery marked Daniel Robin's "My
Olympic Summer," a look at his father's
kidnapping during the 1972 Munich Black
September incident. "Safari" frightened
and amused as a miniature camera fol-
lowed the strange lives of insects. Plus, this
year's Academy Award-nominated short "I
Met the Walrus," an animated chat with
John Lennon, showed up near the end.
Add a Patti Smith-sung Nirvana-cover,
the beautiful collapse of a smokestack and
insight onthe dangersofbeing akid inRich-
Kicking off the 46th-
C7
annual Ann Arbor
Film Festival
mond, California, and you've got a varied,
eccentric opening night of the Ann Arbor
Film Festival. Now, not every piece works,
but that's not the point here. To go and have
fun while trying some new things is what
it's all about. You may even start thinking,
pondering and even criticizing a little.
The Ann Arbor Film Festival is back, and
has every intention of staying for another
46 years.

ABC's faculty-centric
sitcom revisits high
school drama with a
unique perspective
By MARK SCHULTZ
Daily TV/New Media Editor
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) of NBC's "30
Rock" is a smart and funny woman who,
despite her professional
success, struggles to
overcome the relation-
ship and self-esteem Miss Guidd
problems that have
plagued her since her Thursdays at
brace-faced prom night 8:30 p.m.
Enter Becky Freeley ABC
(Judy Greer, "Arrested
Development"), a guid-
ance counselor who doles out advice to
melancholy high-schoolers. Freeley is a
perkier, ditzier Lemon-type who tends to
break into spontaneous dance and pines
after Tim (Kristoffer Polaha, "North
Shore"), the teacher version of the cute
boy who ignored her in high school. But
sorry Becky, the hotter, richer and novel-
writing (!) Lisa Germain (Brooke Burns,
"Pepper Dennis") is honing in on your
man. That's bad enough, but Lisa just hap-
pens to be Becky's former classmate, the
Homecoming queen who never knew or
cared that Becky existed.
This typical revisiting-your-awkward
past set-up, used in "Never Been Kissed"
and at least two episodes of "Full House,"
could make for awfully clich6 and for-
mulaic television. Fortunately, "Miss
Guided" is a refreshing blend of stereo-
types and originality. Though Tim (who,
I'm sure truly loves the kids and probably
scrubs barnacles off beached whales on
his weekends) is a rip-off of heart-of-gold
heartthrobs from numerous other shows,
characters like overzealous Bruce (Chris
Parnell, "30 Rock") and Becky herself
stand opposed to these stereotypes and
show how ridiculous they are.
The show also benefits from its unique
format: a manic blend of standard dia-
logue, camera asides and even "Arrested

Development"-style documentary foot-
age. The last, which often harkens back to
Becky's past, keeps the show moving and
develops backstories in funny ways like
"Arrested" did. For example, past footage
shows Becky as one of two members of
the "Milli Vanilli Fan Club" - the other
dork confides, "I was just hoping Becky
would put out." The more info you get on
Becky, the more you grow to like - and
pity - her.
Unfortunately, "Miss Guided" some-
times ventures too far into sentimental
territory. It's often unclear if the show is
trying to parody the "Dangerous Minds"
genre, where the troubled teacher and
troubledstudenthelp each other. If so, the
dialogue between Becky and her students
is a little miscalibrated, as it fails to give
off even a trace of irony. This kind of dia-
logue also conflicts with the quirkiness
presented elsewhere. "Maybe you can
watch just one more dance," Becky says to
a socially obtuse student, moments after
he's caught her dancing in the bushes to
"Don't Cha." "Can I touch your boobs?"
the student asks a moment later. Basically,
the show's tone is uneven - it's unsure if
it wants to be -a quirky comedy, a clever
send-up of highschool stereotypes or a
sentimental "Boston Public"-style vehi-
cle.
The highly-publicized appearances
of one of the show's producers, Ashton
Kutcher and Jamie-Lynn Spears, in this
Thursday's episode should indicate which
direction the show is going. Will "Miss
Guided" take pot-shots at Spears, use her
to lampoon teen pregnancy or ignore her
off-camera life altogether? Will Kutcher,
as a guitar-slinging teacher, provide the
inspirational quirk of a Mr. Bergstrom
from "The Simpsons" or parody his own
jackass/pretty-boy persona? In a pop-
culture world where parody is done to
death (thank you, "Meet the Spartans"),
"Miss Guided" would be better off as a
goofy and sometimes touching look at the
teacher-student dynamics of high school,
which hasn't really been explored in sit-
com form.
Either way, Greer's character, as long as
she doesn't play for sympathytoo much, is
engaging and funny enough to be worth
watching.

A PORTRAIT OF AN AMERICAN VISIONARY

By BRANDON CONRADIS
Daily Film Editor
How does an artist approach a project
about another artist?
That was the key question in the mak-
ing of "One Bad Cat," a documentary by
University alum Thomas. G. Miller that
will be showing at the Ann Arbor Film
Festival this Thursday at 7 p.m. The film
details the life and career of "outside
artist" Albert Wagner, a reverend and
painter whose work was shaped by his
experiences while living in a Cleveland
ghetto.
"I wanted to shbw Albert's world,"
Miller explained. "I wanted the audience
to be in a sense of wonder of his art, of
his house, of the people he dealt with on

a daily or weekly basis. But I wanted the
audience to make the decision of how they
felt about his art."
Distinguished by their colorful and
oftengrittystyle,Albert's deeply-religious
paintings have drawn varying responses
from all over the country, especially from
theblack community.ButMilleris quickto
refute the idea that the artist's work has a
specified audience. "I think he's speaking
to everybody," the director said. "Some of
his art appeals to religious people. Some
of his art appeals to people that deal with
persecution of the blacks, whether you're
white or black. Some people just like
those primitive street life scenes. What's
interesting about Albert is that most of his
clientele is white, not black."
Even at a film festival as consistently

provocative and edgy as Ann Arbor's,
however, Miller does expect the film to
generate some controversy. "The discus-
sion of racial tension and religious ten-
sion amongst the black community and
the white community is not traditional
in film," he noted. He hopes the film will
elicit more discussion about these issues,
including why Wagner's art tends to be
ignored by many blacks.
With "One Bad Cat," Miller hopes to
open people's eyes to both a unique Amer-
ican visionary and the issues this artist
spent his career trying to address. And to
Miller, Ann Arbor is the perfect place to
do this. "It's a film that has meaning," he
said confidently. "It makes people think.
Which is what they try to make you do at
Michigan - think."

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