The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Monday, April 19, 2010 - 9A f &r " . -.. -. suewwx .. _s..,_ _ .«....+.«.w....:e+en yaA ',,. g #' F >oT'. j7 Taking a final bath "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles": corrupting our nation's youth since 1984. 'Kick-Ass' c C ass Awkward action comedy can't find its identity, secret or otherwise By JENNIFER XU Daily Arts Writer "How come nobody's ever tried to be a superhero?" The answer is never fully pro- vided in "Kick-Ass," but when the end rolls around we don't particularly care, either. Heralded by crit- ics as the perfect cross between gritty realism and fantasy, "Kick-Ass" manages to be both and neither at the same time. The film opens like a Kick-Ass At Quality16 and Showcase Lionsgate of awkwardness surpasses the likes of Michael Cera and Jesse Eisenberg as his voice cracks and falters in his numerous voiceovers. He and his friends try hard to keep the banter going, and sometimes it works, but once the cast of over-the-top characters enters the picture, all becomes lost in the land of dialogue. Henceforth, the film proceeds to devolve into some kind of unwieldy mash-up of "Watchmen" and "Kill Bill." The biggest problem with "Kick-Ass" is its inconsistency. It's understandable that a film modeling itself after a comic book world should be unrealistic, but the char- acters are so one-dimensional and hammy, they border the line of ridiculousness. Moretz (who was quite possibly the worst thing about "(500) Days of Summer") grates as she attempts to mix her tough- girl attitude with snaggletoothed charm. Unquestionably, she gets the best lines - "Contact the mayor's office, he has a special signal he shines in the sky; it's in the shape of a giant cock" - but the ways she executes them are just so uncomfortable you want to cover your ears. Child actors are given a lot of flak for just standing there and looking cute, but Moretz confirms all that can go wrong when they get to do more. And as for the mustachioed Cage, the man loses any shred of good will left over from his neurotic turn in "Bad Lieuten- ant" last year, playing his insufferably caricatured Big Daddy to the T of weird tics and scenery chewing. Truly, the only thing more cheesy than Cage is the array of bizarre Italian mobsters following him, each equipped with a fake Brooklyn accent and swagger to match. The mobster king- pin's nerdy son Chris, played by Christo- pher Mintz-Plasse ("Superbad"), is the only character that sticks, managing to provide some much-needed comic relief in his lim- ited screen time. Of course, all becomes forgiven once the real "ass-kicking" begins. As soon as the mouths stop moving, "Kick-Ass" features action scenes full of jaw-dropping kineti- cisni that rival the best of Japanese kung fu flicks. There's a delirious, manic bloodlust to the film, as Moretz's character flips up a wall and careens 360 degrees over it, show- ering the killers in a stream of bullets and butterfly knives. Blood with the consistency of nail polish streams down their faces, as they slowly collapse and Joan Jett pounds out in the background. The girl can't act, but damn is her body double good. "Kick-Ass" is undoubtedly a fun movie, with its fight scenes sparkling in a way even non-action lovers will be able to get on board with. But since it doesn't do real- ism or escapism correctly, it ends up tee- tering in a limbo zone that pleases no one and confuses everyone. In the end, the film becomes too facile to be any kind of com- mentary on society's increasingly schaden- freudian mindset, too unidimensional tobe a typical loser bromance comedy, but too clunky to be the sort of neorealist escap- ism inhabited by the likes of "Sin City" and "Watchmen." It's a film that could have had so much more to deliver had the story- line been less ambitious, less awkward and less full of Nicolas Cage. T his is my final music column. And, for this reason, thinking about writing it has filled me with a stomach-churning mixture of exasperation, latent self-righteousness and straight-up writ- er's block. Needless. to say, this feeling has not been over- whelmingly pleasant. There's just some- thing so petty about JOSHUA a final column; like, BAYER this is my "last grand musical statement" - my last chance to inform Ann Arbor, for the umpteenth time, about how much better FM radio was in the '90s. (Seriously, if "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Loser" were to crack the Billboard Top 20 in this day and age, I think my disbelief might even rival Miley Cyrus's inevitable aneurysm). The point is that, over the course of my year-and-a-half reign as the Daily's music columnist, I have not been sav- ing up. Every half-baked theoretical notion about the politics, ontology and evolution of music, every last mor- sel of intellectual deliberation about what influences the way in which we process recorded noises - essentially every musical thought that has passed through my mind over the last handful of months, I have already consolidated and vomited out onto this page. Of course, I could have just gone the noble route and not even mentioned the fact that this is my last column. Who cares anyway, other than myself? I could have just quietly snuck out the back door with a cute little rant about how much I love it when a band knows exactly how and when to use miscel- laneous percussion. There's something so simple yet so stomach-tightening when a tambourine or a shaker bursts into the mix at just the right moment, being shaken just the right way. It's just that, given the fact that I've already said everything major I could have possibly ever wanted to say about music, and that I don't really feel like writing that column on miscellaneous percussion, I feel like I'm kind of stuck between a rock and another rock. In a nutshell, I didn't want this last column to be incredibly lame, but I also didn't want it to be incredibly indul- gent (although this column is swiftly becoming both of these things). And, while I definitely wanted to feel some sort of personal attachment to it, I also sort of felt like this was just my ego being a bit of a dick. After all, the last time I wrote a column about the role of music in personal life, someone com- mented, quite concisely: "No one cares about your family. Stop writing." But I'm not going to stop writ- ing, even thoughI probably should, since my word count is telling me I've reached the halfway point and my con- sciousness is telling me I have accom- plished absolutely nothing so far. In fact, I'm probably just going to regress and talk about why I'm here. I am here because I used to take baths with my dad. I would take baths with my dad and he would blast me glo- rious noises on his boom box: Nirvana, Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Def Leppard, Led Zeppelin, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, The Offspring, etc. He would take me to concerts too - I remember having to leave Metal- lica early because the stage was alleg- edly supposed to "blow up" during the encore, and my parents, both psycholo- gists, didn't want me tobe trauma- tized. I remember thinking the smell of marijuana was the smell of rock music. But, most of all, I remember thinking music fans were terrifying: big, husky men with intimidating moustaches and leather Harley Davidson jackets; men who exemplified the term "heavy metal." And, of course, their chain- smoking, red-lipsticked girlfriends. But if my dad had taken me to jazz shows instead, I would have perceived music fans as a tender, warm-souled group of African American head-bob- bers. And if he'd taken me to indie rock concerts, I would have perceived music fans as dressing incredibly ironically and all having eating disorders (not to stereotype at all). Bathing myself in self-indulgence. I guess my point that I've kind of stumbled across as I've been writing this column is that music is big. Sure, film is divided into millions of sub- genres as well, but when it comes down to it, there's the people who go to regu- lar theaters and the people who go to "artsy" theaters. And the people who go to the "artsy" theaters are all more or less the same: They all love the Coen brothers, they all pretend not to love Quentin Tarantino and they all hate "Twilight." Basically, there's the people who go to the movies to be diverted, and the people who go to the movies because they crave artistic expression. But, with music, there's not such a rigid divide. Sure, I think Panic! at the Disco is bourgeoisie scum, but, for whatever reason, I've been to a Panic! concert before, and trust me: The atmosphere there was just one giant ball of prepu- bescent passion. At a concert, there's no such thing as a half-assed music fan - you went out of your way to buy that ticket, and you are there to lose yourself in the sound waves. And, asI sloppily wrap up this cow pie of a final testament, there's one thing I need you to know: If you are reading this column, whether you're a Schubert aficionado or a metalhead, the fact is that you love music. And, for that reason, I love you. See ya later! Bayer wrote this column while listening to Miley Cyrus. To point out his hypocrisy, e-mail him at jrbayer@umich.edu. second-rate beta-male comedy as three awkward comic book geeks muse on how awesome it would be to have a superhero in today's increasingly look-away society. Okay, so far so Apatow. Later on, Dave Lize- wski (Aaron Johnson, "The Illusionist") resolves to carry out this very plan, patrol- ling the streets in a green and yellow scuba suit under the guise of Kick-Ass, attempt- ing to fight crime. The masked adolescent becomes an Internet sensation, spawning a movement of real-life superheroes in the form of the pre-pubescent Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz, "(500) Days of Summer") and her father, the former vigilante cop Big Daddy (Nicolas Cage, "The Wicker Man"). At the beginning, Johnson's level Dum Dum a smart choice .'Dragon Tattoo' is a marked success By EMILY BOUDREAU Daily Arts Writer Lisbeth Salander is not simply a girl with a dragon tattoo. She's a girl with many tat- toos and many piercings and an attitude to match. *** She's a fascinating char- acter, but unfortunately The Girl With "The Girl With the Drag- the Dragon on Tattoo" isn't solely dedicated to watching Tattoo Salander fight crime Atthe Michigan while roaring around on her motorcycle. Music Box Salander (Noomi Rapace, "Daisy Diamond") gets involved with Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist, "Downloading Nancy"), an ordinary jour- nalist who is swept up into an extraordinary investigation of an almost-40-year-old mur- der of a 16-year-old girl. Salander and Blom- kvist join forces to solve the twisted mystery that involves uncovering a family's darkest secrets, a series of grotesque killings, some Nazis and some sadists. Needless to say, "The Girl With the Drag- on Tattoo" is a pretty dark film. For the most part, it takes place in the bleak but beautiful Swedish countryside that has been scarred by the murder. The film's note of haunting emptiness is offset by an extreme amount of graphic violence. "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" is based off the bestselling book of the same title by Stieg Larsson, and the film stays true to the author's original depictions of brutality. The majority of the violence is direct- ed toward women - there are two rape scenes and an endless host of female mutilated bodies. If the film had kept its official, international title - "Men Who Hate Women" - then the graphic images wouldn't be as unexpected. The violence is incredibly shocking and gets increasingly difficult to watch, as it's not the imper- sonal, mainstream gunfight violence that's found in most movies. The violent scenes in this film are very real and disturbing, but the movie provides no commentary on the acts or on the problems in society that gave rise to them. Perhaps director Niels Arden Oplev ("Worlds Apart") chose not to focus on delivering a message on violence against women because he was too caught up in his jumpy storyline. It's hard enough as it is to keep track of the various suspects, who's dead and who's not and how each suspect is related to the others. In addition, Salander and Blomkvist each have a separate, minor storyline. But neither of their individual stories is as intriguing as the main one. While Oplev is able to keep the combined narrative engrossing on the screen, the story is not easy to follow, which makes for a tangled tale. The one aspect of the film that encour- ages the audience to stay on top of the story is Salander herself. She is an effortlessly cool and tough heroine with impressive and Gothic superwoman saves the movie. diverse skills - from hacking computers to having a photographic memory. Unfortu- nately, she's so engaging that it's hard not to wish Blomkvist would just disappear or let her handle everything. Rapace brings a surprising amount of depth to Salander. While she is basically a gothic superwom- an, she's also tortured by a disturbing past and has difficulty reaching out to the world around her. At times, she's as hard to figure out as the case she's trying to crack. Luckily, sequels are already in production, so there will be more chances to discover exactly what Lisbeth Salander is capable of. By KRISTYN ACHO DailyArts Writer It's not easy for today's rock women. In orderto snagsome crucial buzz, indie girl bands have tobe willing to play the part: the copious reverb of Brooklyn's finest juxtaposed with an aesthetically * pleasing vintage per- sona via Vivian Girls; Dum Dum Or L.A.-vibing to-fi garage-grunge riffs Girls melded with a hazy I Will Be underground perso- Sub Pop us a is Pearl Harbor. Whatever the gim- mick may be, if indie girl bands plan on making it big, it seems they better be willing to conform to a certain precon- ceived (or at least stereotypical) guise. If it's any consolation, Dum Dum Girls - the name being an homage to The Vaselines's album, Dum-Dum, and the Iggy Pop track "Dum Dum Boys" - definitely fits the latter bill. Sure, they don't fill any conspicuously neglected void in California's burgeoning fuzz- pop scene, but their endearingly-serrat- ed throwback sound has still managed to make them queens of the L.A. to-fi culture. Dum Dum Girls's debut album I Will Be is 30 minutes of addicting pop haze. Lead singer Dee Dee (who goes by her first name only), who describes the sound as a "blissed-out buzz saw" on Sub Pop's website, wrote and recorded lead vocals for each track. The album is full of high profile collaborations including Nick Zinner's (Yeah Yeah Yeahs) brilliantly brooding guitar riffs on "Yours Alone" as well as Crocodiles's Brandon Welchez's velvety vocals and guitar on duet "Blank Girl." Although Dee Dee first formed Dum Dum Girls as a solo project - she pro- duced an impressive self-titled EP and a slew of shoegazy singles - she quick- ly decided to form a legitimate band and recruited three of her friends to turn her idle-rock hobby into a fervent career. Both opener "It Only Takes One Night" and "Jail LA LA" wax the band's take onbadass femininity. Behindfuzzy synths and a gritty bass line, Dee Dee's vocals become submerged in pounding reverb on the former. While "Jail LA LA" is an '80s-vibing nostalgic treat where the girls cause a not-so-dainty ruckus - they get thrown in jail, grab their motorcycles and go on joy rides behind the coy chorus "Someone tell my baby / Or else he won't know I need saving" - Dee Dee plays up her rebel- lious, cigarette-smoking demeanor. Like she'd ever really need saving. But it's not all aboutfilthy guitar riffs. Concluding track "Baby Don't Go" feels like the quintessential indie romance, complete with hints of yearning and Rocking the indie girl identity. soul spilling. Embedded within a slow acoustic backdrop, Dee Dee confesses, "I never had a mother / I hardly knew my dad / I've been in town for18 years / You're the only boy I've had." Although corrupted by a sense of desperation, she whispers her lines with a seductive voice that yields an undeniable allure. With I Will Be, Dum Dum Girls aren't necessarily revolutionizing the to-fi retro scene. Their sound is similar to L.A. lo-fi standards Nite Jewel, Best Coast and plenty of other gals - but that's OK. Lovey balled "Rest of Our Lives" succinctly sums up their mis- sion. "Oh baby let me take you for a ride for the rest of our lives": These girls are in it for the long haul.