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.