2B — Thursday, October 22, 2015
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
The Daily Defeats
the State News
in this series, three daily arts writers in
varying states of mind visit the same
place and write about their experiences.
baked.buzzed.bored.
this week’s destination:
The Daily vs. State News Game was actually way more enjoyable than I thought it would be. While
I generally abhor crowds, yelling about dumb things and standing next to beautifully open seats, I was
surprisingly entertained by watching people I vaguely recognize running around on a field and actually
doing a great job of catching/throwing a ball. (Shout out to the brave souls on the team/organizers of the
game, you guys were great.)
Tonight I found what I was looking for when I went to the football games at my high
school. There was actual school spirit and a sport that’s just boring enough to give
everyone enough time to chat about vagina hearts and other essential sub-
ject matter. This game gave me the “Friday Night Lights” experi-
ence I’ve always dreamed of, minus hooking up behind the
bleachers. (At least I didn’t hook up behind the bleach-
ers. Did anyone else? Was there a bleacher orgy
that I wasn’t invited to? E-mail our edi-
tors at foxy.michigandaily6969@
michigandaily.gov if you’ve got
any scoop). (Cards on the table, I’ve
never seen “Friday Night Lights,” I have
projected enough of an idealized high school
experience to pretend, though.)
I’m high enough to get real with you guys — I didn’t love the
Michigan/Michigan State rivalry I saw tonight. I understand friendly
competition, but there’s a very hard edge to this one. I heard some rather
vicious things from both sides of the field tonight. I don’t consider the fact that
someone goes to a different school than me reason enough to make fun of the way they
talk or act. And personally, I reject the idea that trashing someone else’s school reinforces
the pride I have for mine.
Downside to the game: It was cold as night on Neptune. Which is very cold. Yeah, I did my astronomy
reading this week. A fellow Daily Arts writer was dealing with some very pointy nipples as a result of this
weather. So the main lesson from this is: Wear your damn jackets and GO BLUE!
—DAILY ARTS WRITER
Since Baked and Buzzed missed most of the first half,
for what should be obvious reasons considering the
impromptu nature of this segment, I have to bear
the burden of having the only full account of
the game for this addition of BBB. But, I am
merely an Arts writer with no real insights
into how to properly report a game of
football (or any sporting event, for that
matter). So I’ll try to stay within my
wheelhouse of television criticism in
order to report what I witnessed on a
cold Friday night.
To describe the differences
between the two football teams repre-
senting their respective student newspa-
pers is to compare the two seasons of Nic
Pizzolato’s anthology series, “True Detec-
tive.” On the one hand, there’s the well-con-
structed first season — sure, in hindsight there are
some flaws, but overall it’s strong through all eight epi-
sodes. Then, there’s the second season — jumbled, confusing
and no one really knows what’s going on. This results in a project that is, at best, half as strong
as its predecessor. Considering the Daily’s 8-4 victory over the State News, it’s pretty easy to
guess which is the first season.
That’s not to stay the State News isn’t without its merits. Every program is inclined to have
its showstopper moment, like a pick six or catch that would make any wide receiver jealous. But
the lack of internal consistency calls to mind a Ryan Murphy series. Sure, there’ll be some fun,
but is it really worth sitting through the whole thing?
When it comes to a showdown of school newspaper football prowess, the Daily proved to be
“The Americans” to the State News’s “Allegiance” — older, wiser and just better in the long run.
—MATTHEW BARNAUSKAS
Like any self-respecting pregamers, we arrive after things
are already underway — apparently it’s 1-1. I’ll admit first off
that I’m not exactly falling down drunk on the sideline. In
fact, I’m loving that I took a few shots of rum in the name of
journalism right before, because now I’m the only one who’s
carefree about how goddamn cold it is. I mean, people are
squatting and jumping just to stay alive on the sidelines, and
I’m all cozy with Captain Morgan snuggled up inside me.
I’m telling you, though, when I’m listing off the great
Daily alumni, Alex Taylor’s name will be uttered right
between Adam Schefter’s and Arthur Miller’s. Chasing him
down is like trying to two-hand-touch a cyclone, except that
cyclone can also suddenly plant his back foot and bomb a
ball 50 yards into the hands of a wide open receiver. Hey
look at me being a sports writer #artsdoessports.
You know Snooze is hardcore because they yell “bitch”
after every first down they get. They also sing the entire
fight song after every 20 yards they gain, but hey, I guess
you gotta take the small victories however they come.
Things get rough and tumble in the 2nd half. We see some
guys bent over across the field, and we wonder what they’re
looking for. I guess a Spartan lost a tooth? Daily Arts discus-
sion ensues over whether our player is to blame or if it’s sim-
ply poor dental hygiene. Taylor also gets legit tackled, but
he recovers and throws three straight touchdowns to make
it 7-3 because only one of them counted? Snooze made us
score thrice, and each of the first two times we jump the gun and scream “The Victors” anyway.
We let them score quickly just so we can get the ball back and finish it. In Alex Taylor we
trust, and sure enough, suddenly we’re running across the field forming a mob in the endzone.
My voice is shot but I still screech out a few “It’s great! To be! A Michigan Wolverine!”s. Eleven
in a row, squad. We did it — we ran out of fingers.
So like 11 percent of my brain deep down knows that, from a neutral point of view, we’re the
bad guys. We’re the undeniably more talented, unstoppable team that just destroys the under-
dog happy ending every time. And I feel a little cruel doing that, but then I see Snoozers who
actually truly in their heart of hearts believe they have a better paper than us, and I realize it’d
be even crueler to let them stay ignorant and delusional. Sorry little bro, that crushing disap-
pointment you feel every year? It’s just tough love.
—DAILY ARTS VICTOR
Ann Arbor resident Jean
Walter has been going to the
market for 10 years and was
looking for something to do
after retiring from a secretarial
position at the University. So,
she started knitting and selling
her scarves and hats at the mar-
ket. She has lived in Ann Arbor
for many years.
She emphasized the thrill of
seeing people try on her hats. As
I interviewed her, a few people
walked up to her booth, and
Walter’s face lit up each time.
Walter was happy to talk to the
customers and say how good the
hats looked on their heads.
Talking to the artists, one
characteristic kept popping up:
the sense of comradery and sup-
port that exists among the sellers.
Several of them talked about how
other artists in the market sup-
port them and how a community
has formed among the artisans.
“Everybody’s so nice.” Kerr
said. “The first day here, we
didn’t know anything. Every-
body’s coming over to us. (We)
made a lot of friends. It’s a nice
atmosphere.”
Kovalack spoke of how she felt
inspired by the other artists in
the market. “A lot of us will talk
amongst ourselves, and visit
each other and see our differ-
ent art. It inspires you to have
somebody say, ‘well that could
be ... ’ or ‘you might wanna ... ’ (I
enjoy) being around people that
are like-minded and creative.”
She also told a story about
how
she
helped
an
artist
improve their product, saying,
“I had said to the rock guy, he
had made toilet paper holders
out of his rocks. He takes a rock,
he puts a rod-iron on it, and
he makes it into a toilet paper
holder … I said to him, have you
thought about making it into a
plant stand, and he’s like, ‘oh my
god, that would be so cool. I’m
gonna do that.’ ”
For many artists, the Ann
Arbor location is key to the mar-
ket’s success. A wide array of
locals patronize the market, some
of whom are people who come
many weeks in a row.
“(The artists) have return cus-
tomers that know where they
are,” Lee said. “I’ll get a lot of
inquiries here in the office like
‘Where’s so-and-so? I haven’t
seen them. I thought they were
gonna be here.’ ” Her response is
usually, “Well, they’ll probably be
here next week.”
“It might be a cliché to say,
but Ann Arbor is a community
that clearly supports local busi-
ness efforts,” Smith said. “I can
say with confidence that most
of the artists are local business
people. I think Ann Arbor sup-
ports local, they support art.
Clearly it’s the type of town,
because of the University and
the population here, they’re
clearly in support of art.”
However, the market’s popu-
lation isn’t exclusively locals.
Kovalak said that over half her
sales are from tourists who are
from out of town.
“I’ve had my teapot birdhous-
es go to New York, New Mexico,
England, New Jersey, Indiana
and the Chicago area. It’s neat
to see my art travel. I like that,
to know somebody from Eng-
land has one of my birdhouses.”
Lee encouraged students to
take advantage of the market
as a way to put their name out
there and make a little bit of
money in the process.
“We’re always looking for new
artists. Whether it’s students, (or)
anyone (else) that makes things
… I welcome them to go through
the application process. There
isn’t much risk. You can come and
see how it goes. I think it’s a great
place to get started.”
Lee put it best when she said,
“The artists are the heart of the
market.”
And, after spending time in
the market, nothing could be
more true. It’s the artists that
make spending time in the mar-
ket a worthwhile way to spend
a Sunday. Listening to their
pride and enthusiasm as they
describe their process and talk
about their pieces made for an
entertaining couple of hours
and brightened up an incredibly
cold day.
The next big event for the Ann
Arbor Farmers Market is their
Holiday Open House, which takes
place Nov. 15.
KERRYTOWN MARKET
From Page 1A
SINGLE REVIEW
“Hip Hop is over for me,”
Kanye declared in 2008, more
a statement
about his
upcoming art
than an expla-
nation for his
recent behav-
ior. He had just
lost his mother
to a heart
attack and his
fiancée to a
break-up, and,
in turn, had stunned us all with
the innovative 808s & Heart-
break. The emotional project,
full of minimalist beats, chilled
synths and unconventional auto-
tune, helped create the Kanye we
know and (sometimes) love today
— a universal icon, tastemaker
and trendsetter.
And now, in 2015, he returns
to the album that began his tran-
scendence into god-like status.
In September, he performed
808s in its entirety at the Holly-
wood Bowl. And on Monday, he
released two new tracks on his
Soundcloud page, one a remix of
the album’s opening track, “Say
You Will.” Yeah, Kanye has a
Soundcloud now, verified by rap-
per Travis Scott, who posted an
Instagram of the track with the
caption “It Starts.”
What’s starting exactly? Yeezy
season, and hopefully, the rollout
of his new album, SWISH. And
what a way to begin — with this
explosive version of one of 808s’s
best, featuring vocals and com-
position by Caroline Shaw, 2013
winner of the Pulitzer Prize for
Music. The fusion of contempo-
rary classical music and hip hop
is unconventional but not unex-
pected from Ye. And this track
is both a tribute to his dark past
and a nod to his bright future.
- RACHEL KERR
MYSPACE
A
Say You
Will feat.
Caroline
Shaw
Kanye West
‘Crimson Peak’ is an
excellent Goth-rom
By VANESSA WONG
Daily Arts Writer
A word of caution: don’t watch
the “Crimson Peak” trailer. And
don’t even dare glance at its pro-
motional
post-
ers, because, as
its heroine cor-
rects us, “It’s not
a ghost story.
It’s a story with
ghosts in it.” The
ghastly market-
ing,
promising
a minefield of
gore and stock
horror at every
turn, deters from the film’s legiti-
mate triumph that under Guill-
ermo Del Toro’s (“Pacific Rim”)
operatic vision, a well-trodden tale
of Gothic romance creaks back to
life. And that, my friends, is why
the focus should be on “Crimson
Peak” — the film, and the film only.
It’s high society New York at the
turn of the century, and the elegant
dresses, coiffed hair and well-
ironed businessmen are all bathed
in a sumptuous gold glow. The
aristocratic Sir Thomas Sharpe
(Tom Hiddleston, “The Avengers”)
sweeps in from across the pond
and captures the heart of Edith
Cushing (Mia Wasikowska, “The
Kids Are All Right”), the daugh-
ter of a wealthy, self-made indus-
trialist. Yet Edith, a strong-willed
girl writing novels about ghosts,
is no stranger to darkness. Since
her youth, her mother’s ghost has
visited her — a spidery, slithery
figure with a terrifyingly raspy
voice, designed with slick style
rather than camp — and warned
to beware Crimson Peak. Viewers
notice what Edith does not: Even
as her lips meet her charming suit-
or’s for the first time, the lighting is
split between the two, gold on her
and a passionately burning crim-
son on him. When a tragic mur-
der leaves her father dead, she’s
whisked away to eerie Allerdale
Hall, home to Sharpe and his sister
(Jessica Chastain, “Interstellar”),
where past spirits come back and
the resplendent color palette fades
cold and bleak as Edith unearths
the old home’s secrets.
Wasikowska and Hiddleston
are
absolutely
bewitching
together, the ingénue and her
dark prince taking on a modern
sensibility
when
reimagined
with Wasikowska’s intelligent
gaze and Hiddleston’s growing
introspection. With her immac-
ulate poise, Chastain, too, is
seductively sinister. She takes on
a cruel form of beauty, her face
almost always unreadable but
simmering with expertly bottled
rage. The three leads, excellent
individually, play off each oth-
er’s emotions well, and together,
they stitch together a past where
love, deceit, sacrifice and shame
blaze as intensely as the red clay
marking everything in Allerdale
Hall ominously.
The
performances,
lavish
costumes, stark contrast in set
design between Edith’s old and
new homes intertwine marvel-
ously with Del Toro’s always deft
handling of characters’ emotional
ecstasy. Though the plot is thin and
predictable, the immersive Gothic
atmosphere pays homage to hor-
ror’s classics. Only in the film’s
excessively gory climax does the
meticulously constructed build-
up falter and devolve into camp. A
film whose heroine refuses to pan-
der to popular tastes in her fiction
for the sake of mass appeal should
follow suit. While there are some
legitimately terrifying scenes that
do venture into the realm of mod-
ern horror, this denouement felt
thrown in just to fit the film into a
genre that it’s not.
With temperatures dropping,
skies darkening, and leaves brown-
ing to decay, it might be to escape
the midterm scuffle into the arms
of a charming English gentleman
with a questionable past, because
despite the many warnings to
“beware Crimson Peak,” its pull is
far too seductive to ignore.
A-
Crimson
Peak
Legendary
Pictures
Rave & Quality 16
FILM REVIEW
Caution: don’t
watch the
‘Crimson Peak’
trailer.