The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Tuesday, February 10, 2015 — 5

Red carpet recap: 
Trends of 2015

Grammys fashion 

showcases boob cages 

and metallics

By KATIE CAMPBELL

For The Daily

The top trends at the Grammys 

this year spanned all across the 
fashion spectrum. Some were new 
(shoutout to colored metallics) 
and some were beyond old (take 
a shot for every silver dress stum-
bling down the red carpet, you’ll 
be drunk enough to headbang to 
AC/DC’s opener). Sirens played 
peek-a-boo 
with 
cutouts 
and 

floundered with volume. Unfor-
tunately, simplicity was tossed out 
of the metaphorical window, with 
the exception of the gorgeously 
sleek Jennifer Hudson in a white 
column dress by Tom Ford. Boob 
cages, calf-length hemlines and 
dangerously over-the-top fabrics 
overwhelmed on the red carpet 
this year. Let’s pray the stars learn 
from the following mistakes and 
take a note from the scarce tri-
umphs in time for Oscar night.

Metallic

Metallic was seen on almost 

every typically risk-taking starlet 
this year, most notably Lady Gaga 
and Katy Perry. Both were disap-
pointing, but for different reasons. 
Gaga’s custom design from stylist 
Brandon Maxwell looked like an 
ill-fitted, low-budget Broadway 
costume. The deep v-cut neckline 
made a mockery of her endowed 
chest and the high slit only served 
to emphasize her short stature. 
Gaga could have pulled it off with 
more classic styling, perhaps a 
softer smoky eye and a cleaner 
blow out. However, no one wants 
to look like a bar crooner that was 
kicked out at 4 a.m. It was the 
ultimate contrast to Nicki Minaj’s 

stunning low-cut fringed num-
ber, courtesy of Tom Ford. Minaj’s 
dress nailed the metallic look with 
a play on texture with a soft, spar-
kling sheen.

Luckily, a new variety of metal-

lic made its way onto the scene 
from the good graces of couture 
designer Elie Saab. Taylor Swift 
took on the carpet with a beauti-
ful, shimmering aqua structured 
gown. The dress featured cutouts 
on the shoulders and a blink-and-
you’ll-miss-it high-low hemline. 
It was like a futuristic, mermaid 
Marie Antoinette — and it rocked. 
I’ve seen this look be knocked 
around for having prom dress ten-
dencies, however, with great risk 
comes great reward and Swifty 
knocked it out of the park with this 
look.

Cutouts

Cutouts have been a trend since 

prom girls decided they wanted 
tighter dresses and higher heels, 
which is to say they’ve been 
around for the last four years. This 
trend is becoming its own worst 
enemy. When it was scarce, it was 
a playful and flirtatious look, worn 
only on risk-taking women who 
flirt with danger. Now, the trend is 
becoming more and more unflat-
tering with each snip of the fabric. 
Highlights from this game were 
Chrissy Teigen in a white Gucci 
number with symmetrical square 
cutouts highlighting her figure. 
Teigen gets bonus points for hubby 
John Legend’s Dolce & Gabbana 
sleek gray suit and gentle soul. 
I’m hesitant to add Miley Cyrus 
in Alexandre Vauthier to the mix 
since the whole showing off the 
pelvic bone thing is generally 
unflattering. However, it was a risk 
that stood out on the carpet, and 
she looked radiant with soft styl-
ing, seemingly low-impact make-
up and a pulled back hairstyle. 
Lowlights go to “American Idol” 

star Katharine McPhee in Emilio 
Pucci and Miranda Lambert in 
Gabriela Cadena for the unflatter-
ing boob cages. 

Volume

The sheer amount of exuber-

ant volume that fluffed its way 
down the carpet was enough to 
cause an uproar online. Rihanna 
in Giambattista Valli Haute Cou-
ture was a specifically hot topic. 
Ciara, however, was not. RiRi 
has proven to be able to pull off 
pretty much anything, from the 
oversized men’s suit-jacket she 
wore in her performance with 
Kanye West and Paul McCartney 
later in the night to her nearly-
nude mesh dress at last year’s 
CFDA Awards. Yes, Rihanna 
looked like a super buoyant pink 
cloud combined with an eight-
year-old’s Barbie pink cake dress, 
but she had so much fun with it 
and brought some much-needed 
enthusiasm to the carpet. She 
made fashion fun and she made 
the dress hers and that’s what is 
so great about it. Ciara, though, 
looked like she was dragging a 
trash bag down the aisle, which 
was neither fun nor enthusias-
tic. There’s a difference between 
wearing the volume and working 
with it and letting it overwhelm 
you. 

That being said, I’d like to 

remind everyone of Anna Win-
tour’s red carpet commentary 
from last summer: “(Celebrities) 
have all these teams of people 
telling them what to do, what 
to wear, how to do their hair, 
make-up. And they’re so scared 
of being criticized, whereas, you 
know, what’s wrong with looking 
different? How many mermaid 
fishtail strapless sequin gowns 
can we see?”

Taking this into consideration, 

let’s hope the stylists bring their 
all for Oscar night.

Don’t criticize Kanye 
for Beck comments

By ADAM DEPOLLO

Managing Arts Editor

I’ll come right out with it 

— I didn’t watch most of the 
Grammys. 

That might be a bold admission 

to make for the Co-Managing 
Editor of the Daily’s Arts section, 
but I honestly don’t think you 
can blame me for it. I mean, let’s 
be real, any organization that 
was still nominating the Dave 
Matthews Band for Album of 
the Year in 2010 clearly exists in 
some sort of dystopian mytho-
poetic realm where — as they say 
in “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” 
— the rules are made up and the 
points don’t matter. 

Every 
single 
year, 
the 

nominations for the myriad 
Newspeakian 
Grammy 

categories 
are 
announced 

(“Urban 
Contemporary” 

anyone?), 
the 
public 
makes 

known its revulsion toward 
the various irrelevancies that 
invariably make their way into 
those categories, and we then 
let loose a paradoxical torrent 
of blind rage and complete 
dejection when the awards go to 
the wrong people. 

So why do we keep watching? 

I ask myself that question every 
year, and I struggle to find any 
answer other than that, at this 
point, we’re just in the habit of 
doing it. Or, even worse, maybe 
we like it.

But I’m not really here to talk 

about why we keep engaging 
in the sadomasochism that is 
watching the Grammys. That’s 
a question for psychologists, or 
maybe E. L. James. 

I’m here to talk about the one 

interesting thing that did happen 
at the awards show on Sunday 
night, which, unsurprisingly, 
came from one of the few 
consistently interesting people 
in the constellation of modern 
pop culture: Kanye West. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the 

Grammy 
Award 
for 
Album 

of the Year went not to the 
obvious winner in that category 

Beyoncé), 
according 
to 
any 

possible criteria by which to 
judge it, but to Beck’s Morning 
Phase. 

The incredulity in the room 

was palpable as the 44-year-
old rocker walked on stage, his 
eyes darting nervously from the 
audience to the presenters — he 
would later state that he thought 
Beyoncé was going to win the 
award — when, suddenly, Kanye 
walked up in front of him, 
reached his hand toward the 
microphone and then stopped 
short. He held up his hand in a 
gesture of pause, flashed a smile, 
turned around and went back 
to his seat. It was over almost 
as soon as it began, but those 
brief moments (and Beyoncé’s 
stunning homage to “Selma” 
and, by extension, the entire 
“Black Lives Matter” campaign) 
were without question the most 
memorable, the most real things 
that might be drawn from such 
a vapid and out-of-touch affair. 

I would think that the beauty 

of 
Kanye’s 
“interruption” 

should speak for itself, but the 
response from social media and 
a good number of pop culture 
commentators — the real reason 
why I’m writing this piece — has 
astonishingly focused on the 
supposed audacity of doing what 
every halfway honest consumer 
of pop music wanted to see 
happen in the first place. 

In an interview with E! after 

the awards show, Kanye clearly 
explained his motivation for the 
silent outburst: 

“I 
just 
know 
that 
the 

Grammys, if they want real 

artists to keep coming back, 
they 
need 
to 
stop 
playing 

with us. We ain’t gonna play 
with them no more. And Beck 
needs to respect artistry and 
he should’ve given his award 
to Beyoncé, because when you 
keep on diminishing art and 
not respecting the craft and 
smacking people in their face 
after they deliver monumental 
feats 
of 
music, 
you’re 

disrespectful 
to 
inspiration. 

And we as musicians have to 
inspire people who go to work 
every day, and they listen to 
that Beyoncé album and they 
feel like it takes them to another 
place.”

To me, that’s not a speech that 

smacks of egotism and privilege 
(Kanye does, after all, give up his 
awards when he feels he doesn’t 
deserve them). He points out, 
correctly I think, that creating 
a piece of artwork that sells 2.2 
million copies in 2014, going on 
to become a global pop culture 
phenomenon in the process, 
is an act of transcendence, 
something that only a handful 
of people have ever been able 
to achieve. No matter what 
might be said about Morning 
Phase, Beyoncé did something 
Beck can not do and will never 
do in his musical career. Kanye 
simply demanded that we be 
honest with ourselves and own 
up to that fact. 

Sure, 
I’ll 
concede 
that 

there 
might 
be 
something 

presumptuous about ordaining 
oneself as the universal arbiter 
of pop culture. But isn’t it 
obvious that getting caught 
up on Kanye’s egotism ignores 
the bigger picture here? Aren’t 
we missing the forest for the 
trees? And, again, he didn’t say 
anything we weren’t already 
thinking ourselves:

“I’m 
here 
to 
fight 
for 

creativity tonight,” West said. 
“That’s why I didn’t say nothing, 
but y’all knew what it meant 
when Ye walked on that stage.”

You knew what it meant, 

don’t blame him for doing it.

Not ‘The Americans’

By MATT BARNAUSKAS

Daily Arts Writer

If only “Allegiance” didn’t pre-

miere after “The Americans.” Ever 
since teasers first debuted on NBC 
for the George 
Nolfi-helmed 
spy 
thriller, 

comparisons 
have been made 
(in some cases 
rightly so) to 
FX’s 
critically 

acclaimed show. 
It’s 
relatively 

easy to see why 
– both shows focus on entangling 
acts of espionage between the 
United States and Russia, mainly 
through the eyes of a single fam-
ily who happens to spy for Rus-
sia. “The Americans” ’s success 
in depicting ’80s Cold War ten-
sions has created a seemingly 
insurmountable 
mountain 
for 

the modern-day “Allegiance” to 
scale. While “Allegiance” is able 
to differentiate itself from its cable 
rival, it still borrows other tropes, 
creating a straightforward, pre-
dictable product with glimmers of 
promise.

Opening with an execution by 

furnace, “Allegiance,” immedi-
ately tells viewers what to think: 
“Russians are the bad guys.” As 
sinister-looking men dressed in 
black trench coats watch a man 
be incinerated, the show draws a 
line in the sand labeling the Rus-

sians as villains on one side and 
the Americans as the good guys on 
the other. This oversimplification 
of international conflicts contrasts 
with “Allegiance” ’s more chal-
lenging family dynamic.

At the center of the show is the 

O’Connor family. The family’s only 
son, Alex (Gavin Stenhouse, “Per-
son of Interest”), is a rookie CIA 
analyst assigned to help determine 
if a Russian defector is legitimate 
or not. Likable, yet overly famil-
iar, Alex is an investigative savant 
who can read through hundreds of 
pages of information in a night and 
has expert-level knowledge about 
seemingly any subject, including 
how industrial furnaces work. 
Simultaneously, he is somewhat 
awkward and painted as an out-
sider. In short, he’s a relative run-
of-the-mill genius with a quirk or 
two that is all too common on TV. 
Alex isn’t alone in his convention-
ality, with most of the CIA charac-
ters feeling generic. This includes 
no-nonsense boss Sam Luttrell 
(Kenneth Choi, “Sons of Anar-
chy”) and tough female agent/
definite love interest Michelle 
Prado (Floriana Lima, “The Mob 
Doctor”).

However, 
unbeknownst 
to 

Alex, the majority of his fam-
ily is Russian spies. His parents, 
Russian-born Katya (Hope Davis, 
“The Newsroom”) and Mark 
(Scott Cohen, “The Carrie Dia-
ries”), an American brought in by 
Katya, are retired and want noth-

ing to do with their former lives. 
But their past comes to haunt them 
in the form of walking evil Rus-
sian archetype, Victor Dobrynin 
(Morgan 
Spector, 
“Boardwalk 

Empire”) who works for the SVR, 
the modern KGB. He insists that 
the pair recruit Alex to be a spy as 
well. When the two protest, men-
tioning a deal made years ago, Vic-
tor says there is new management: 
“They don’t care about deals made 
with the old management.” 

The dilemma faced by the 

O’Connors is the strongest part of 
the episode, as Katya and Mark try 
desperately to not bring Alex into 
a fate that has already claimed his 
older sister, Natalie (Margarita 
Levieva, “Revenge”). Natalie pres-
ents some compelling narrative 
possibilities considering her bit-
terness about the life her parents 
reluctantly forced her into, say-
ing “You move Heaven and Earth 
for Alex, what did you ever do for 
me?”

“Allegiance” goes through sev-

eral of these plot points in its pilot, 
never quite settling on one long 
enough to reach maximum effect. 
This is unfortunate, because there 
are strong sources of tension over 
what Katya and Mark should do 
and whether Alex will find out 
the truth, but they’re never given 
enough time to fully grow. Hope-
fully, as the show moves forward, 
it will allow promising threads to 
develop further and coalesce into 
a distinct identity for “Allegiance.”

STYLE NOTEBOOK

B-

Allegiance

Series 
Premiere

Thursdays 

at 10 p.m.

NBC

“Honey, the Motherland is not gonna approve of these grades.”

‘Project Almanac’ is 
time travel done right

By NOAH COHEN

Daily Arts Writer

Maybe the only time-travel 

movie in recent memory to sub-
scribe to the anthropic principle, 
“Project 
Alma-

nac” does the 
time 
travel 

genre justice. 
The 
movie 

doesn’t try to 
explain 
how 

time 
travel 

works, but it 
does hint at 
how the uni-
verse handles 
paradoxes: by deleting the wit-
nesses. 

That’s the anthropic principle 

at work – the philosophical con-
sideration that observations of 
the physical universe must be 
compatible with the conscious life 
that observes it. This is why the 
future-version of our protagonist 
David (Jonny Weston, “Chasing 
Mavericks”) is annihilated at the 
end (beginning?), but the future-
version of the camera remains 
intact.

“Project Almanac” takes off 

in the style of “Chronicle”. It’s a 
found footage film where irre-
sponsible kids come into an 
unreasonable degree of power. 
The content of the movie is pre-
sumably found by the protago-
nists on the second iteration of 
their adventure, at the end of the 
movie.

The cast is cute. David is cut-

out geek, and his posse is equally 
“Breakfast Club.” Their group’s 
camaraderie separates “Project 
Almanac” from time travel clas-
sics like “Back To The Future”. 
For the first half of the movie, the 

whole group goes back in time 
together. The conflict arises when 
David takes it on himself to solve 
the butterfly effect consequences 
of previous time trips by himself. 

In “Butterfly Effect” (another 

time travel flick) there was a 
supernatural aspect to justify 
why everything always went 
wrong. In “Donnie Darko” there 
was only one version of actions 
Donnie could ever take, and the 
mood of the movie was predis-
posed toward metaphor rather 
than science; the prime mover of 
films like those is a supernatural 
overmind. Whereas, in “Project 
Almanac” the prime mover is the 
vulnerable protagonist himself, à 
la “Doctor Who.”

Because the time travel in 

“Project Almanac” is supposed 
to be pure sci-fi rather than some 
crystallized narrative tapped 
from overdrawn wells of Greek 
pathos and “human condition” 
pablum, there’s no scifi-compat-
ible reason for why things can’t 
actually go perfectly in this plot. 
David says there are no second 
chances, but he’s totally wrong. 

In proper wish-fulfillment time 
travel, 
there 
are 
arbitrarily 

many chances. 

The frantic jostle of a found-

footage film works well within 
the cast of Instagram-age teen-
agers, but the group’s reaction 
to finding a time machine in 
their friend’s basement doesn’t 
quite match the hugeness of 
the moment, and the pseudo-
scientific babble is transparent 
and reductive. Weston is charis-
matic enough to carry the movie 
regardless, but there are kinks, 
and they are noticeable.

Though it lacks the infectious 

magic of “Back to the Future,” 
“The Time Traveller’s Wife” 
or “Harry Potter and the Pris-
oner of Azkaban” and though 
it doesn’t mindfuck with the 
intensity of “Donnie Darko” or 
“Source Code,” this movie is 
every bit on par with “Primer,” 
“Looper” and “Groundhog Day” 
and it’s a much stronger package 
than “Chronicle.” Time travel 
movies are a special brand of 
enjoyable, and this one fits into 
the genre like a cog in a watch.

PARAMOUNT PICTURES

“Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

To me, that’s 
not a speech 
that smacks of 

egotism.

B+

Project 
Almanac

Rave and 
Quality 16

Paramount 
Pictures

MUSIC NOTEBOOK

FILM REVIEW

TV REVIEW

