8A - Monday, September 20, 2010

CASH
From Page 7A
had a deeply intuitive understand-
ing and overview of every criti-
cal juncture in Southern music
... These songs are as important
as the Civil War to who we are as
Americans."
More than 30 years later, Cash
selected 12 of these songs for The
List. The album includes original
covers of classics such as Hank
Cochran's "She's Got You," Danny
Dill and Marijohn Wilkin's "Long
Black Veil" and folk song "Moth-
erless Children," as well as duets
with Bruce Springsteen, Elvis
Costello and Rufus Wainwright.
Cash's concert will be the sea-
son's first Arts & Eats concert. For
$15, students will receive a ticket
to the concert, a pizza dinner and
a pre-show lecture.
In addition to Arts & Eats, fans
can find other Cash-related events
at Manheim's lecture "American
Roots/American Routes 101 -
Part 1 - Country Music" at Cob-
blestone Farms Barn tonight at 7
p.m. He will discuss the origins of
country music and its importance
in American culture, and examine

how Cash and her father contrib-
uted to this genre. Manheim also
plans to play some of the original
recordings of the songs that Cash
covered in The List.
Although this Saturday will
be Cash's UMS debut, the singer
is no stranger to Ann Arbor. In
fact, this past January, Cash per-
formed many of the songs from
The List as part of the 33rd Annu-
al Ann Arbor Folk Festival.
"It should be a great show,"
Manheim said. "I saw her do basi-
cally this show at the Ann Arbor
Folk Festival."
Manheim remembers how
humble Cash was at that perfor-
mance.
"They brought out all the art-
ists at the end with Richie Havens
and (Cash) said, 'I can't believe I
get to stand on stage with Richie
Havens.'"
Mirroring the daring nature
of Cash and her father as art-
ists, UMS is making a bold move
including a country singer in
its season lineup, which centers
around an Americas/Americans
theme. For Manheim and other
Ann Arbor country enthusiasts,
this move to "broaden the reper-
toire" is a welcome change.

The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
'Easy A'F makes the grade.

High-school comedy
makes a star out of
Emma Stone
By JENNIFER XU
Daily Arts Writer
The smell of freshly ground cof-
fee beans and the chatter of stu-
dents streaming across the Diag
can only mean
one thing: the
beginning of fall
semester. And
what better way EasyA
to usher in a AtQualityl6
shiny new school and Rave
year than with an Screen Gems
easy-breezy high
school comedy -
an heir to 2004's "Mean Girls"?
Gradually breaking out of the
role of "that-chick-who-got-
punched-in-the-eye-by-Jonah-
Hill-in-'Superbad'," Emma Stone
plays Olive, a smart, wonderfully
self-aware girl invisible to the
walking cliches strutting around
her high school. When Olive can't
admit to her best friend that the
majority of her weekend was spent
dancing on her dresser belting out
the lyrics to "Pocketful of Sun-
shine," she fabricates an initially
harmless lie about losing her vir-
ginity to an anonymous commu-
nity college guy. A few periods
later, the rumor circulates rapidly
around the school community,
instantly metamorphosing her
into the class floozy.
But instead of running away
from her new title, Olive embrac-
es it. For the price of a Home
Depot gift card, or, in the case of
one frugal desperate, a 20-per-
cent-off coupon to Bath & Body
Works, she begins a black-market
enterprise soliciting fake sex to
geeky boys and closeted gays. She
even goes as far as embroidering
a scarlet "A" (a la Hester Prynne
in "The Scarlet Letter") onto her
lacy black corsets, looking like
she emerged straight out of a
Parisian boudoir.
"I always thought pretending to
lose my virginity would be a little
more special. Judy Blume should
have prepared me for that," the
c'est la vie Olive proclaims.

"A' is for "Why are you wearing A corset to school!?"

MICHIGAN LAW LEGAL SCHOLARS
DISCUSS HOT TOPICS:
SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
CITIZENS UNITED CASE
c- ZI)l CE-\T ICITAN \L SPEN)IN)N
THEL CH'ICAG() GUN C'ASE
JU STIE STE-VENS ANID JUSTiCE KAGAN

Confidently grabbing hold of
the film's reins, director Will
Gluck ("Fired Up!") imbues "Easy
A" with enough barb to zing, but
without sacrificing the good cheer
of a comedy - its bright, scissor-
sharp dialogue never recedes to
toxic snark. It also helps that the
film is supported by a cast of gold.
Patricia Clarkson ("Cairo Time")
and the always-great Stanley
Tucci ("The Devil Wears Prada")
play Olive's happy-go-lucky, hip-
pie parents with screwball 6lan.
Amanda Bynes ("She's the Man"),
who announced and then shortly
unannounced her retirement from
acting on Twitter, almost steals
the show as the goody-goody
Christian girl thirsting after the
salvation of Olive's supposedly
depraved soul.
None of this means, however,
that "Easy A" is without its stum-
bling points. Olive undergoes a

bizarre quest for morality and
religion late in her charade, and
the film spends too much time
indulging in its array of admitted-
ly stock characters. Yet for each
of its missteps, "Easy A" rewards
the viewer with more than double
the charm. In this kind of genre
film, it's really about the attitude
behind the celluloid, and "Easy A"
possesses this in spades.
A lot of this has to do with the
film's young heroine. With her
flowy auburn waves and rockstar
rasp, Stone is truly a pre-rehab
Lindsay Lohan reincarnated. If
the '80s brought us the cherub-
faced, misunderstood Molly Ring-
wald, the '90s California-sweet,
dizzy dame Alicia Silverstone in
"Clueless" and the '00s foaming-
at-the-mouth-for-popularity
Lohan in "Mean Girls," Stone's
Olive is everything we want our
new decade to represent. She's a

protagonist self-aware enough
to envy and understand her pop-
culture predecessors, but mired
in enough teenaged insecurity
junk to be relatable. Although
Olive is a role that any of Disney's
pretty young things could poten-
tially pull off, Stone's cool, genu-
ine deadpan singlehandedly pulls
the film into the pantheon of teen
culture classics. Make no mistake,
Hollywood - Stone has the stuff
of a superstar.
This fame, however, might last
more transiently than expected.
With Silverstone having retreated
into the background only, a short
while after catapulting into super-
stardom, and Lohan going down
the express train to celebrity
annihilation, the future has never
been too friendly to these talented
young ingenues. Let's just hope
that Stone isn't met with similar
obstacles.

.

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