2B — Thursday, February 5, 2015
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
TRAILER REVIEW
A little late for the Oscars,
SpongeBob resurfaces on the
big
screen
in his sec-
ond
feature
film:
“The
Sponge-
Bob
Movie:
Sponge Out
of Water.” An
evil
pirate,
played
by
Antonio
Banderas
(“Spy Kids”)
(he’s back! and not in boots!),
lays siege to Bikini Bottom to
recover the final page of a book
that will makes true whatever
the author writes in its page.
SpongeBob must go (ahem) out
of water and into 3D animation
to save the day.
Perhaps due to his spongy
resilience, Spongebob has man-
aged to stay relevant to almost
two generations of cartoon
fans. Most Nickelodeon car-
toon shows come and go (e.g.,
“Rocko’s Modern Life”), but
SpongeBob has merrily abided
on the sunken shores of Bikini
Bottom for nearly 16 years.
Unfortunately,
either
SpongeBob
has
changed
or
I
have,
because
Mr.
SquarePants
doesn’t
seem
to have the same appeal as
before: His yellow seems less
yellow, his bubble obsession
less hilarious, his steady job
as fry cook a little bit weird.
I’m left asking the questions
I was too innocent to ask
before: Why has SpongeBob,
who’s apparently an adult,
been working as a fry cook for
16 years? Does Patrick have a
mental disability? Does Squid-
ward suffer from depression?
Luckily, this motion pic-
ture isn’t aiming to please
jaded college students like
myself. It’s geared toward
kids for whom SpongeBob is
still new(ish); and for them,
Patrick’s caveman stupidity,
Squidward’s killjoy attitude,
Gary’s meowing and Sponge-
Bob’s,
well,
squarepanted-
ness will be as funny and
enjoyable as ever … Oh, and
this time it’s in 3D!
-ZAK WITUS
C+
‘The
SpongeBob
Movie:
Sponge Out
of Water’
Paramount Animation
MUSIC VIDEO REVIEW
Rihanna is having a moment.
She knows we’ve been a col-
lective nervous wreck waiting
for her return to music, for the
official
start
of
the
#R8
era. Rihanna,
aware of the
fact that she
has our atten-
tion, is letting
herself have a
moment. And
that moment
is
“FourFi-
veSeconds.”
There’s
a
lot
that
feels
oddly
unexplained about this whole
“FourFiveSeconds” thing: the
grand departure in sound it rep-
resents for her, what it means for
the rest of her imminent eighth
album, what Paul McCartney
is doing there, what the song is
even about. The accompanying
music video, released on Tues-
day, doesn’t do much to address
the elephant in the room,
though — what the fuck does
Rihanna have up her sleeve?
Whatever is up there must
be quite big, considering how
baggy the vintage Sean John
denim jacket (which, some-
what unsurprisingly, belongs to
Kanye) is that she’s sporting in
the clip. Directed by the famed
Dutch duo of Inez van Lam-
sweerde and Vinoodh Matadin,
who are known for their highly
posed fashion photography, the
“FourFiveSeconds” music video
was shot completely in black
and white using a square aspect-
ratio, perfect for @badgalriri’s
Instagram account.
The video features the trio of
denim-clad iconic artists using
exaggerated hand and body ges-
tures to convey their feelings in
front of a strategically-lit white
backdrop, all the while looking
quite beautiful themselves. The
most striking points of the video
are the tightly-shot close-ups
of Rihanna and Kanye looking
directly into the camera with a
look that combines scorn with
confidence, fear with excite-
ment. There’s a twinkle in
their eyes — they know we’re
part confused, part intrigued
and part excited by the whole
thing. What Inez and Vinoodh
have created here is something
special, and it’s very much in
line with the sound of Kanye’s
“Only One,” as well as with his
Kardashian-induced obsession
with high fashion. But, what
remains (perhaps purposively)
unclear is what is all means for
Rihanna and the trajectory of
this new era.
“FourFiveSeconds”
has
grown on me in ways I
wouldn’t have expected, and
the music video probably will,
too. But my favorite moment
from the entire video hap-
pens just eighteen seconds in
after Rihanna sings “I might
do a little time” as she looks
directly at us, her powerful
stare piercing the camera.
After a pause, she rolls her
eyes hard. Part of what’s great
about this moment is that it
sort of reflects my feelings
about “FourFiveSeconds:” I’m
entertained, I’m enjoying it,
but I’m also kind of over it. I
want to see what’s next. The
other reason that this moment
stands out is because it’s just
that — a moment — and it’s
one that reassures us that
the Rihanna we love — the
fierce, unapologetic RiRi that
doesn’t give a shit about what
anyone thinks — is ready to
return. It’s a flash of brilliance
that allows us to be okay with
indulging her in this moment,
just as long as it only lasts
about four or five seconds.
-GIBSON JOHNS
B+
‘FourFive
Seconds’
Rihanna,
Kanye West
and Paul
McCartney
Roc Nation
PARAMOUNT ANIMATION
ROC NATION
National Harbor, Md. — “WEL-
COME BACK, BRO! WELCOME
BACK
TO
THE
BIG
DICK
PARTY!”
Less than two minutes after
checking into the convention and
getting my badge, two very drunk
and very happy geeks had their
arms around me.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.”
I looked over to where the two
lanky fellows were walking. Sev-
eral other inebriated gamers were
hammering away at gamepads,
huddled in front of 20-inch HD
monitors.
I was hoping it would be longer
before the MAGFest culture shock
set in. I had three newcomers with
me (my girlfriend and two of my
best friends), and I wanted their
transition into convention culture
to be smoother than it was. Per-
haps a subtler welcome wagon to
a first con experience than two
touchy-feely “Guilty Gear” players
would have been nice.
“MAGFest is so many things to
so many different people. I some-
times like to say that MAGFest
doesn’t exist, there are actually 15
events going on at the same time
in the same building” said Nicho-
las Marinelli, the promotions and
public relations official of MAG-
Fest.
“My business card says ‘promo-
tions and public relations,’ but real-
ly, it’s everything. MAGFest has a
very flat organizational structure;
it’s not very deep hierarchically.
I’m on the Board of Directors; I’m
the only one that really does the
promo.”
The Music and Games Festival
happens once a year in the Gay-
lord National Resort and Conven-
tion Center in National Harbor,
Maryland, — a kitschy, ritzy town
of restaurants, bars and oversize
convenience
stores
seemingly
constructed entirely around the
hotel’s economy. It’s a 30-minute
drive from Washington D.C., and
it likely wouldn’t exist if not for
the hundreds of office retreats and
trade shows that happen in the
Gaylord Hotel yearly.
Marinelli
summarized
the
event quite well: “It’s a four-day
long party dedicated to video game
music and gaming of all types.”
MAGFest 2015 was the 13th
event of its name. Well, of its acro-
nym. Originally called the Mid-
Atlantic Gaming Festival, it was
“back-ronymed” to Music and
Games Festival a few years into its
life.
For one weekend a year, Nation-
al Harbor is a different planet. It’s
a 96-hour party that never sleeps.
It’s a festival. It’s a convention. It’s
absolutely insane.
But you might not want to call
it a convention. On MAGFest’s
website, it explicitly states that
MAGFest is not a convention, it’s a
festival.
“That’s me. Everyone always
busts my ass for it, every time
they say convention I say festival!”
Marinelli said. “I’ve been going
to anime conventions since high
school, and then after you’ve been
going to these things for however
long, you start to ... it’s a different
crowd at MAGfest. Anime conven-
tions are fun especially if you’re
into that, but MAGfest is a bit of
an older crowd, it’s a more relaxed,
less manic crowd. I mean, the fes-
tival thing is really just a tagline,
and if the IRS asks, we’re a con-
vention. It’s basically just meant
to denote that it’s not your typical
anime convention.”
Later in the interview, I mistak-
enly said “convention” again, and
Marinelli promptly corrected me.
Despite the reluctance to call it a
convention, there’s actually quite
a lot about MAGFest that’s consis-
tent with convention culture.
The music festival and gaming
con aspects of MAGFest coexist
fairly well. The hotel certainly has
its standard gaming con accom-
modations: gigantic show floors
lined with expensive arcade cabi-
net collections; panels featuring
YouTube gaming celebrities like
JonTron, The Angry Video Game
Nerd and Game Grumps; areas
for tabletop games; and of course,
huge tournaments.
Simultaneously, a big part of
the hotel is a dedicated music
exhibition. There’s a jam space for
impromptu band formation for
congoers (read that as con-goers
or congo-ers, either works) and
a giant concert hall where virtu-
ally every major videogame cover
band (as well as many hopeful DJs)
comes to put on what has to be
their favorite show of the year — I
can’t see how playing for the exact
niche audience your music was
made for wouldn’t be.
As a frequent listener of video
game music, it was pretty damn
incredible to attend an event dedi-
cated to its exhibition. The suc-
cess of MAGFest is a testament
to the genre’s diversity and lon-
gevity. Even so, it can be difficult
to explain what makes the genre
great — or even listenable — to
people not in the know. Marinelli
MAGFEST
From Page 1B
credits the appeal of the genre to
the frequently limited tools game
composers work with to improve
their craft.
“It had very complex, inter-
weaving melodies and harmonies.
When a composer is forced to cre-
ate music under those strict limita-
tions, he or she has to make damn
sure it sounds good, otherwise
you’re just gonna want to mute it,
and that’s something that always
appealed to me about it,” Marinelli
said. “It’s cool that the constraints
made it so that the composer had
to exercise their creativity as much
as they could, yet at the same time,
the simplicity of the sound palette
made it so that today you could
have so many different interpre-
tations of the same song, and they
could all be so radically different
that you could listen to the same
song 10 times in a row and not get
tired of it.”
There’s
not
much
synergy
between the “music festival” and
“gaming con” sides of MAGFest,
other than the ability to stroll
between the two sides of the event
at will. But perhaps it’s the overall
culture of MAGFest that’s syner-
gistic.
So, apparently conventions have
their own culture? They do, and it’s
fascinating to witness, especially
within the walls of an ornate hotel.
What people don’t fully under-
stand about geek conventions
and festivals like MAGFest is that
normal societal and social rules
simply don’t apply to them. Obvi-
ously, courtesy and civility are
still norms, but the ground rules of
human interaction are inherently
different.
For one thing, people will dance
anywhere. Amateur DJs seemed to
have speaker setups blasting elec-
tronic music (often video-game-
themed) from every hallway in the
Gaylord National Resort. Around
them, small groups of sweaty guys
and girls could be seen rollicking
back and forth around their seg-
ment of carpeted hotel floor. I’ve
never seen people dance like they
do at conventions. None of them
ever look like they actually know
how to dance, but they move and
jump and sing with the confidence
of professionals.
Another oddity is the domi-
nance of cosplay. Like many con-
vention settings, around a third of
the MAGFest attendees engaged in
some form of cosplay — dressing
in elaborate costumes emulating
video game, comic book and anime
characters. There’s no doubt that
conventions are absolutely the
greatest people-watching events
in the world. Sitting or standing
virtually anywhere in the event is
like watching a costume parade, a
rainbow of pop culture idolization,
fur suits and out-there fashion.
I have to imagine that MAGFest
is either a nice break or a royal pain
in the ass for the hotel staff. For
one weekend of the year, instead
of having to deal with stuffy white
people in suits, they instead cater
to Hatsune Miku, the Raccoon City
Police Department, Rei Ayanami,
Belly Dancing Toads and the entire
roster of Super Smash Bros.
This probably sounds like it
would be pretty overwhelming
to those not familiar with the con
scene. You don’t have to be familiar
with convention culture to appre-
ciate the event, though. Marinelli
noted that there are so many niche
interests represented at MAGFest
that it would be difficult not to
enjoy any of them.
“Video gamers enjoy MAG-
Fest, tabletop gamers, LARPers,
cosplayers, musicians, people who
like watching YouTube, academ-
ics, game designers, game com-
posers, artists, crafters. There’s all
these areas at MAGFest that you
don’t necessarily see anywhere
else,” Marinelli said.
Perhaps the most refreshing
aspect of MAGFest — and the
aspect most noticeable while sim-
ply walking around the event — is
its absolute dedication to promot-
ing
inclusivity.
MAGFest
has
absolutely the most diverse array
of identities I’ve seen at a conven-
tion. While cons are normally
portrayed in media as thoroughly
white and male (for example, the
Star Wars convention in Kevin
Smith’s “Chasing Amy”), MAGFest
entirely transcends that stereo-
type. MAGFest is a convention of
geeks, to be sure, but its geeks are
a rainbow of colors and sexualities,
with an almost-equal gender ratio.
“We had a lot of different kinds
of people coming into MAGFest
(the last few years), it’s quite differ-
ent from what it used to be when
it was a bunch of smelly dudes,”
Marinelli said. “I’m not exactly
sure how that happened, but I’m
very glad it did because we’ve
evolved into this very diverse,
safe space where people of any
size, shape, gender, color, religion
and whatever can come and feel
welcome. It’s part of our code of
conduct, our harassment policy,
that we don’t take any shit when it
comes to ragging on people for any
reason.”
To me, MAGFest even tran-
scends “college pamphlet” diver-
sity. It’s not just people of different
races and genders. MAGFest is the
most inclusive event I’ve maybe
ever attended because it’s tolerant
of different lifestyles, ideals, man-
ners of speech and more. It’s no
wonder those dancers looked so
confident — they felt safe and free.
“We have people in fur suits
walking around our event. What-
ever!” Marinelli said. That’s their
bag, that’s what they do. I’m not
gonna … I’ve actually learned a
lot about that, because you know,
most people’s exposure to fur suits
is CSI, when they had the furry
orgy (episode) or whatever. And
it turns out, people who wear fur
suits just really like Ninja Turtles
and Star Fox. Like, all right, that’s
cool, I can get behind that. I’m glad
that so many people are welcome
at the event, because in the current
age of the Internet we live in, it is
sometimes said that we shouldn’t
need diverse representation of
people in gaming, and I think
that’s 100 percent false.”
Marinelli explained to me that
the convention has difficulty cap-
turing and selling people on the
sprawling range of niche interests
that MAGFest caters to.
“When I first took on the role of
a main promo guy, I was really bad
at it. Not that I’m not still bad at it,
because I kept playing up the video
game music angle. That’s what it
was to me. I didn’t quite realize at
the time how many different fac-
ets there are to MAGFest and how
many different ways there are to
enjoy it,” Marinelli said.
“When I finally twisted one
friend’s arm into final coming, he
thought it was the greatest thing
ever. He said, ‘Why didn’t you tell
me all these arcade machines were
here? This is so cool!’ And now
he’s the head of our merchandise
department. It just goes to show
that no matter what your niche is,
you’re probably going to find it at
MAGFest. Unless it’s 19th century
French literature. I don’t know
what to tell you there.”
There was no lack of conversa-
tion in my car during the eight-
hour car trip back to Ann Arbor. In
fact, I’m pretty sure we could have
gone for far longer reminiscing
about what we just experienced.
If not for the wonderful culture
of fun and inclusivity or the panels
of famous YouTube stars, MAG-
Fest is absolutely worth attending
just to see. The endless parade of
congoers in immaculate home-
made costumes, the seemingly
endless line of old-school arcade
machines, the many after-par-
ties in Gaylord hotel rooms with
enthusiastic and excited people
that are colorful in every sense of
the word — MAGFest has to be
seen to be believed.
COURTESY OF JACOB RICH
Daily Film Editor Jacob Rich poses with two cosplayers at MAGFest.