2 RTSIWednesday, June, 27, 2012
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
FILM REVIEW
lgKin gdom'.9 keeps youth too clean
Anderson's film can't-
capture messiness of
growing up
By JENNIFER XU
Magazine Editor
In Sylvia Plath's poem "The Bab-
ysitters," two nubile girls escape
from the white-pillared mansion
of their employ-
ers and take off **
in a green boat.
They steal a sug- Moonrise
ared ham from Kingdom
-he icebox, read
aloud and float At The
cork dolls on the Michigan
ocean. The dolls
bob up and down Focus
in the thick salt
water, emblems of the inescapable.
reality ofgrowingup.
If the babysitter was Wes Ander-
son and the oceanic voyage his
quest to reclaim childhood, then
"Moonrise Kingdom" is his eva-
nescent dollhouse. Set in a sum-
#Wer camp chivalrously christened
Camp Ivanhoe, the film spends 90
percent of its time on two young
"troubled" lovers who parade their
goldenrod love through storm,
sea and calamity. Part children's
adventure story, part New Wave
rendezvous, "Moonrise" is ear-
nestly filtered through the lens
of a burgeoning adolescent, high-
lighting the troubles of preserv-
ing innocence while hurtling into
adulthood.
o utwardly, "Moonrise King-
dom" is a vision. The film's aesthet-
ic is Anderson's most successful to
date. The miniature tent spaces, lit
with the sepia tone of a crinkled
Polaroid photograph, marked with
every square centimeter the ache of
loneliness. The people are decorat-
edjust as pristinely - plaid on plaid,
every hair pleated, every wrinkle
smoothed.
But where "Moonrise" fal-
ters is in its execution: The dolls
in the dollhouse just won't do
what they're supposed to. Ander-
son's miniature worlds, so tidily
arranged, are in effect ruined by
the young actors who reside in
them. Scenes designed to induce
prolonged feelings of melancholy
instead feel laughable and inau-
thentic.
Why is this? After all, it's not
like it hasn't been done before.
We've come to recognize - even
love - the prototypical "Wes
Anderson" character: earnest,
filled with wanderlust, possessing
a vaguely childlike/foreign nick-
name. Margot. Dignan. Steve Zis-
sou. We'd think that "Moonrise"'s
newly minted protagonists - real
children who act as adults (rath-
er than the other way around)
- would ably round out the hal-
lowed cast.
But the issue when working
with child actors, particularly
ones with little experience in the
cinematic realm, is that it's 'dif-
ficult to attain Anderson's brand
of droll tonality without sounding
too affected.
Newcomer Kara Hayward,
who plays the female protagonist
Ann Arbor, MI
ONE-H UNDRED-TWENTY 'TWO YEARS OF EDITORIAL FREEDOM
Weekly Summer Edition
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
STATE OF THE UNIVERSITY
q Regents approve
tuition, increase
FOCUS
Listen, I'm not going to lie, I have no idea where we are.
Suzy, particularly struggles with
this task. often her lines - already
slightly asinine ("I want to go on
adventures, I think. Not get stuck in
one place.") - run flat, and her into-
nations blur over. Mouth shut, the
12-year-old Hayward is a splendor,
imbued with the kind of '60s after-
glow British mod revivalists would
have gone gaga over. But mouth
open, she's kind of a dud.
Auteur theory dictates that a film
be executed just so, and Anderson
falls on the pickier end of that spec-
trum. In arranging the objects, yes,
he wholly succeeds. But can living
beings - particularly children - be
directed that way? What's more,
should they? After all, adolescence
is a messy thing. Perhaps a film
about adolescence ought to embrace
that messiness.
That's not to say that Anderson's
films don't contain some internal
devastation. They do. But while
the destruction of Anderson's uni-
verse is the calculated disaster - the
cracking of the mirror into equal,
jagged fragments - the graduation
from childhood isn't quite so math-
ematical. Human beings have never
been that mathematical.
More and more, it feels like
Anderson would prefer to work
with animatronics, porcelain faces
as pure and shiny as if they were
incubated in eggshells. That's per-
haps why "Fantastic Mr. Fox" ranks
so highly in the critical discourse.
There were no people to get in the,
way of Anderson's vigilantly curat-
ed display cases.
In-state students
with 4.9-percent
increase, out-of-
state 6.7-percent
By BETHANY BIRON
ManagingNews Editor
The University's Board of
Regents voted 5-3 last Thursday
to increase tuition rates by 2.8
percent for in-state students and
3.5 percent for out-of-state stu-
dents for the 2012-2013 academic
year.
The rates will amount to a hike
of $360 for in-state students and
$1,340 for out-of-state students
and will be paired with a 10.1-per-
cent increase in available financial
aid for need-based undergraduate
students, totaling $144.8 million.
During the meeting, University
President Mary Suew Coleman
said the increase in financial aid
will help offset the tuition hike
for students in need.
"For four straight years now,
we have presented a financial
aid budget that covers the full
increase in tuition for our needi-
est students," Coleman said. "This
year's increase in financial aid
NEWSROOM
From Page 11
angle between dewy-eyed assis-
tant producer Margaret Jordan,
(Alison Pill, "Hugo"), her me-
first boyfriend Don Keefer, McA-
voy's former executive producer
(renowned stage actor Thomas Sad-
owski) and newly-hired senior pro-
ducer Jim Harper (John Gallagher,
Jr., "Spring Awakening" on Broad-
way) will surely create tension that
only promises to escalate as Don
and Jim vie for Maggie's affections.
The show isset in 2010 and deals
with real-life news events, so when
the Deepwater Horizon oil rig
explodes in the Gulf of Mexico on
MacKenzie's first afternoon on the
job (In real life, the rig exploded at
9:45 p.m., not in the middle of the
day), the team springs into action to
get the scoop..
As anyone who's been in a news-
room can tell you, breaking news is
like a drug - things just move faster
when you're working against the
clock and the competition to get the
news out. Sorkin effectively cap-
tures that emotion as Maggie scores
her first big interview, getting a gov-
ernment official to comment on the
worsening environmental disaster.
Like "The West Wing", which
romanticized government ser-
vice, the "Newsroom" wants to be
a more-perfect form of modern
journalism. There were flashes of
Sorkin's brilliance throughout the
pilot, but it remains to be seen if the
newsroom can actually deliver on
that promise by showing that it's
more than just talk.
IA'
W5
N2
A concept image of one of the eight satellites the teanm of professors will use to record data from deep inside cyclones.
NASA picks U' for $151.7 mill. mission
'U'
of
to
professors beat 15 lunar mission. Now, three Uni-
versity professors have been cho-
ther proposals sen for a new NASA project, one
that believes many answers may
study tropical be blowing in the wind.
On Monday, NASA announced
storms that a team of University profes-
sors - Christopher Ruf, profes-
By STEVE ZOSKI sor of atmospheric, oceanic and
Daily News Editor space sciences and electrical
engineering and computer sci-
971, NASA sent three astro- ences; Aaron Ridley, -associate
who were University alumni professor of atmospheric, oceanic
Posselt, assistant professor of
atmospheric, oceanic and space
sciences - were chosen to receive
$151.7 million over the next five
years to undertake their Cyclone
Global Navigation Satellite Sys-
tem project.
The project aims to simulta-
neously launch eight satellites by
2016 that will spend at least two
years in space where they will
gather data about cyclones and
other tropical storms that previ-
See NASA, Page 3
will come in the form of grants,
not loans, which helps reduce
(the) student debt burden."
In a press meeting before the
regents meeting, University Pro-
vost Philip Hanlon called finan-
cial aid "the highest priority in
this budget" and expressed the
University's efforts to help stu-
dents in need and maintain the
University experience. This is the
seventh of the past eight years
that financial aid for undergradu-
ates will increase by at least 10
percent.
The approved fiscal year 2013
tuition increase is less than that
of fiscal year 2012, in which out-
of-state students experienced a
6.7-percent increase, and in-state
students accrued a 4.9-percent
increase, amounting to $1,781 and
$797 respectively.
Tuition rates will also increase
by 3.6 percent at the University's
Flint campus and 3.7 percent at
the University's Dearborn cam-
pus. Additionally, room and board
rates at the Ann Arbor campus
will increase by 3 percent, total-
ing $284 for fiscal year 2013. Two
percent of the increase will be
allocated for ongoing residence
hall renovations.
The state appropriation will be
See REGENTS, Page 2
In 1
nautsv
to the moon as part of the Apollo and space sciences; and Derek
.~
..V.. -: .:: .
FOR UPDATES ON MICHIGAN'S ART KINGDOM
INDEX
nol. s @. us 0 nsa2012 TheMichiganDaily
NEWS.......... .....2
CLASSIFIEDS.....................6
CROSSWORD........................6
SPORTS............................8
ARTS...............................10
E NEWS OPINkINT~ ARTS SPORTS
UGL bathrooms The social divide Sorkin's scoop From Yost to the
closed for repairs Matthew Zabka analyzes H BO's "Newsroom" talks NHL
Students' studies may be the extensive polarization in the talk but can't, walk the Coverage of Michigan hock-
hindered. American media. walk. ey players at the NHL draft.
>> SEE PAGE 3 >>SEE PAGE 5 >> SEE PAGE 11 >> SEEPAGE 8
FOLLOW US @MICHDAILYARTS
We're witty.