Monday, July 2, 2007 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com artspage@michigandaily.com 734-763-0379 Post-rockers in a half shell By MATT RONEY grooves and call it a hip-hop DailyArts Writer band, but the spacey noodling found all over its albums Once a genre embraced quickly disproves this. mostly by critics and quirky It would be far more accu- local scenes, post-rock has rate to call Tortoise an elec- been gain- tronic band, but that's not ing popu-Tortoise quite right either. Although it lar ground. was one of the first groups to Almostevery June2 perform with the aid of com- blissed-out Doorsopenat puters, it embraces organic college stu- 9:30 p.m. instrumentation. The music dent around builds from the ground up, is a devotee 18+ $18 often beginning with a drum- of the E- Blind Pig beat or drone, and adding bow whale steel guitar, marimba or oth- sounds and erworldly electronic flour- chirpy murmurings of Sigur ishes along the way. This is Ros, and Explosions in the music to make your brain Sky has scored a major Hol- dance - your eyes close, your lywood film. head tilts back and you don't But Reykjavik and Austin understand why you have aren't the only cities where that huge smile on your face. you can find guitars, basses Tortoise's shows are long and drums played like orches- and dynamic, with climac- tral instruments. Tortoise, one tic sonic moments coming in of the genre's most influential waves. This band is about the pioneers, hails from the Mid- interactions between musi- west - Chicago, to be precise, cians, their instruments and of course, in Tortoise's several laptop computers. case, it's lucky that the post- Expect multiple drummers, rock label is so vague. Its lots of marimba and an ultra- music is almost entirely psychedelic video show. The beyond categorization. Its group is proud of its unique jazz influence is one of its virtuosity and likes to show it most striking features, but off - few bands can wrap an combined with its slightly audience in sound quite like proggy tendencies it comes Tortoise. Seventeen years of out sounding more like the blowing people's minds have Soft Machine or King Crim- paid off. son than any traditional jazz David Daniell, another band. Some hear the chopped, Chicago experimentalist, will programmed beats and low See POST-ROCK, Page 12 Just another man trying to make his way in this world ... 'Sicko' is local filmmaker Moore's most complete effort yet By IMRAN SYED Editor in Chief Amazingly, there is a point in "Sicko" - documentarian/local hero Michael Moore's latest, most pol- ished expose that few other film- makers would have *** the grit or wit to conduct so effort- SiCko lessly - where, even Atthe insulating for all we Michigan and know about Moore's Showcase extremely leftist views, we are still Lionsgate left utterly stunned and outraged. Every one of Moore's documenta- ries, despite their often propagandist overtones, has such a moment, and if you can reach that point without giv- ing up on the film, the gravity of its message will strike you. In "Sicko" this moment comes just a couple of minutes in when we learn of a man who, having sliced off two of his fingers in an acci- dent, actually had to choose which one to reattach because he couldn't afford to do both. The piece of his finger that he could not afford to reattach was simply thrown away. Talk about sick. In tackling the multi billion-dol- lar health insurance industry in this film, Moore took a risk even bigger than his last (and most controversial) film, "Fahrenheit 9/11." Would people who turned out in record numbers to see him bash Bush return to see his thesis on health care that is so similar to the one that's been thrown around liberal circles for at least a couple of decades? A muckraker to his Spar- tan core, Moore put all the capital he has gained on the line and gives us his most damning, even-handed and complete film yet. There's little that Moore, a gradu- ate of the University's Flint campus, says in "Sicko" that a college student wouldn't already know and any sen- sible person wouldn't be able to guess. Health insurance, though we think it's supposed to be for our well-being, is actually a for-profit creation that seeks aggressively to cut corners to turn said profit. If some sick people are left in the wake, then so be it; any- one who read or saw "The Rainmak- er" would hardly be shocked, much less compelled to act. But as always, it is Moore's human- ist approach, direct tone and disbe- lieving humor - introduced in "Roger and Me," expanded upon in "Bowling for Columbine," overdone in "Fahr- enheit 9/11" and finally perfected here - that are the sell. For all the theories, extrapolations and fudging done by politicians and talking heads about the consequences of universal health care, Moore does the legwork and expertly presents his case so completely that it would take even the most hard-boiled Bushie a couple of days to slap together a retort. "Sicko" is calmer and thus easier to digest than other Moore creations simply because it can be. Moore already has his friends and enemies and no longer needs the flashy antics to win audiences. Not to say that he has mellowed - far from it. Does fill- ing a boat with sick people and setting sail for Guantanamo Bay sound like the idea of a mellow man?. As for what will come of the film, that is a conundrum Moore seems yet to solve. The film will be wildly popu- lar in leftist bubbles like Ann Arbor (the long list of special thanks in the credits includes Ann Arbor's Michi- gan Theater), and it's hard to deny that Moore is still preaching to the choir. But taking this debate further involves making it widespread, some- thing Moore manages to do with this very accessible, poignant and com- pelling film. Like perhaps no other filmmaker working today, Moore is undoubtedly adding to the conversa- tion and working to turn the tide. MORE ONLINE at michigandaily.com FILM REVIEW kl Catch the review of Disney and Pixar's latest, "Ratatouille" online at michigandbily.com. Grooving past one hare at a time.