The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, January 13, 2017 — 5
‘A Monster Calls’ merits
mockery for mediocrity
J.A. Bayona’s latest feature tramples over premise by painting
in broad strokes and capitalizing in tired, indulgent clichés
“Stories are wild creatures,”
a CGI tree monster tells
a young British lad in an
otherwise
tranquil
home
somewhere
in
the meandering
middle
of
“A
Monster Calls,”
the latest film
from
Spanish
director
J.A.
Bayona
(“The
Impossible”).
The
monster,
voiced
by
Liam
Neeson
(“Silence”), comes at night
to
tell
stories
to
a
boy,
Conor
(Lewis
MacDougall,
“Pan”), who is confronting
his
mother’s
impending
death from cancer. Conor’s
father lives in America and
his grandmother, his new
guardian, is more strict than
caring. At school, he’s bullied
by his classmates and picked
on by his teacher.
In other words, Conor’s not
all right. And the monster,
armed with a gnarly Northern
Irish voice and formed from the
old yew tree in the cemetery
across the glen, coaches the
kid to be brave through telling
three fairy tales, two of which
are stunningly rendered in
watercolor
animation.
The
message is clear: Stories are
important because they teach
us valuable lessons about life’s
complexities. The shame in
including this conceit in “A
Monster Calls” is that while
screenwriter and source book
author Patrick Ness (“Class”)
puts a premium on the power
of
stories,
his
story itself lacks
the
structure
and
potency
to
salvage
the
film
from
an
onslaught
of
poor choices.
Even
more
frustrating
is
that
what
one
garners to be the
purpose of the stories — to
teach that life is complex, that
there are no easy answers —
is directly repudiated by the
simplicity of the characters
on screen. While Conor, an
avid and talented artist, draws
effervescent images of his
world, Bayona and Ness draw
in rather wide, bland strokes.
Conor’s
mother
(Felicity
Jones, “Rogue One: A Star
Wars Story”) is a Dying Family
Member With Cancer, rapidly
diminishing, hopeless, soft-
spoken and flawless save for
a malignant tumor. We’ve
seen this before, too many
times. Conor’s grandmother,
an abnormally off Sigourney
Weaver (“Avatar”), is just cruel
and cold, concerned more with
her house’s orderly appearance
than her grandson’s sanity.
Conor’s bully lashes out at
our protagonist continually,
for no reason other than that
Conor is consumed by his art
during classes. He’s beat up
outside the school on multiple
occasions, and his schooling
life is reduced entirely to this
two-handed relationship, as if
they two are the only students
at the school.
The film, overstuffed with
both platitudes and extraneous
thematic vehicles like Conor’s
art and the stories and the
monster
itself,
becomes
something
of
a
mockery
of its central idea. Stories
surely
have
transformative
potential,
but
“A
Monster
Calls” is not one of those
stories. Nor are the monster’s,
but they at least get credit for
being jaw-dropping in their
realization. These fairy tales,
dreamlike
and
captivating,
provide all-too-brief respites
from the utter blandness of
the
story
that
practically
serves
as
their
bookends.
They’re pure cinematic candy
but suffer from a dearth of
groundbreaking lessons. Life
doesn’t have easy answers,
things are confusing and it’s
all right to make mistakes. We
get it.
I fear this film may matter
or mean more for individuals
older
and
younger
than
myself, but that should only
serve to diminish its quality.
The
specific
is
universal
insofar as that specific world
is
constructed
to
lifelike
specifications.
“A
Monster
Calls”
is
cinematic
dog-
whistle politics, a tale about
grief told in ways only those
who have unfortunately and
severely experienced it would
truly understand.
FOCUS FEATURES
The Giving Tree SUCKS this year.
DANNY HENSEL
Daily Film Editor
The sneaker conundrum
FILM REVIEW
C-
“A Monster Calls”
Focus Features
Rave, Quality 16
WE HAVE PROBLEMS. WE ALL HAVE
PROBLEMS.
If, like us, existential dread keeps you up at night, please email npzak@umich.edu for a
primer on why we’re your people.
STYLE NOTEBOOK
The ethics of the sneaker business is marred with ambiguity
Sneakers have been an inte-
gral part of fashion for longer
than I have been alive. There
are hyped-up sneakers being
released every month and, if you
are lucky enough to buy a pair,
the resale price can be astro-
nomical. It’s not unheard of to
make upwards of a 200 percent
profit on a pair of sneakers. I
remember when I was successful
in purchasing a pair of the Pirate
Black Yeezy Boost 350 sneakers
for about $200. I was extremely
excited to wear them, but I felt
the need to satiate my curiosity
and looked at the resale prices
for my pair. When I saw that I
could realize a 300 percent profit
by selling them, I was no longer
able to look at my sneakers as
$200 shoes but rather $800 ones
— I had to sell them.
Some people have even turned
sneaker resale into a full-time
job. Recently, a man named Allen
Kuo entered the spotlight of the
sneaker
community,
posting
pictures with about 100 pairs
of the Yeezy 750 Boost sneakers
released in June of 2016. For ref-
erence, the retail price on these
sneakers is about $350 and the
resale price according to StockX,
a reputable site for finding a fair
price for resale sneakers, is about
$950. Some quick math tells you
that Allen is making at mini-
mum $60,000 on the release of
a single pair of sneakers (he has
the sneakers posted on his site
for $2,000, so he may be seeing
even more in profits from this
venture). This isn’t the only pair
of shoes that he has gotten en
masse this year: Kuo has posted
pictures on his Instagram with
other coveted Yeezys and Jor-
dans whose resale values have
surely shown him many more
thousands in profits.
Kuo is not unique in this ven-
ture, though. For every Allen
Kuo in the sneaker game there
is also a twenty-something year-
old kid with a “plug” who posts
on every Facebook buy/sell/trade
group that you’re a part of that
they have ten pairs of the new
sneakers for sale at, maybe, a 250
percent markup. Sneaker bots
have also been around for many
years. A bot essentially functions
as an “add-to-cart” service for
prospective sneaker purchasers.
These script packages capital-
ize on the fact that humans can
only type in their shipping infor-
mation so fast and, that by the
time an ordinary customer has
finished typing in their 16-digit
credit card number and billing
address, a customer with an ATC
service has already successfully
checked out, or “jacked” their
cart. Retailers consistently claim
to be working to stop the efficacy
of bots, but release after sub-
sequent release show that even
sites as large as Foot Locker sim-
ply cannot stay ahead of the ATC
developers. It doesn’t stop with
sneakers either, large brands like
Supreme and Palace see the same
thing happening. A Supreme
box-logo hoodie (yes, a sweat-
shirt that simply has an embroi-
dery with the brand’s name) can
retail for around $150 and will
sell on sites like Grailed for four-
times that amount within a few
hours of the posting.
A question that I have strug-
gled to answer for myself, even
in the context of my single pair
of Yeezys, is the whether or not
it is fair to use these methods as
a means of making money. The
answer that I have been able to
come up with is a resounding
“maybe.” I’ve realized that the
reason why everyone cannot get
a pair of coveted sneakers or a
hoodie is not due to the fact that
full-time resellers are hoarding
them, but rather because the sup-
ply does not meet the demand.
Regardless of whether someone
like Kuo buys all 1,000 pairs of a
hyped release or if 1,000 distinct
purchasers are able to buy them,
the resale market will still exist
and sellers will still actualize
greater gains on a pair of sneak-
ers than even some of the riskiest
stock options. Sure, some people
may be able to purchase a pair of
shoes that they intend on keep-
ing if bots are banned. But, I am
sure that there are plenty of peo-
ple like me who can’t turn down
a quick buck. I could go into the
intricacies of a marginal-benefit
/ marginal-cost analysis, but in
the end all that will show is that
even though there are some peo-
ple who are barred from the sec-
ondhand market because of their
willingness-to-pay, markets will
still clear and retailers really
have minimal incentive to do
anything about bots and plugs.
NARESH IYENGAR
For The Daily
This week Daily Music writers
look back at — and reconsider —
less modern pieces of music.
Folk music intersects with
popular music in interesting ways.
Classic artists like Woody Guth-
rie, Johnny Cash and most of all
Bob Dylan have taken root in the
hearts of fans for generations, and
today the genre is being freshly
interpreted
by
contemporary
popular artists as disparate as Bon
Iver, Fleet Foxes and the Avett
Brothers. Folk has had its notable
moments, both on the charts of
popular music and in coverage
by major publications. But as an
umbrella with many subgenres,
it has also seen more than its fair
share of artists falling through the
cracks into obscurity.
John Prine falls somewhere in
the middle here: He is celebrated
among folk fans and music critics
alike, but isn’t widely known in the
popular sphere. When I mention
him in conversation to my friend
who listens to folk music or ask
for his music at a record store, his
name is recognized instantly, but
in most other conversations, it is
met with blank stares. His catalog
is almost as extensive as Dylan’s,
and his songwriting abilities have
been the source of consistent criti-
cal praise since his eponymous
debut album in 1971, yet his name
becomes less generally recogniz-
able with every passing year.
This may be because he has
failed to produce any chart-top-
ping singles to launch him into
public attention. Many songs, like
John Denver’s “Take Me Home,
Country Roads” and Old Crow
Medicine Show’s “Wagon Wheel,”
have left a significant enough
impact on the general public to
preserve their artists’ names in
history indefinitely. Curiously, no
single song has done this for John
Prine, which may account for his
relative deficit in popular recogni-
tion.
This deficit could also be attrib-
uted to Prine’s lyrics. Many of his
songs are historically specific,
such as 1971’s “Paradise,” which
describes the takeover of a small
Kentucky town by a coal company.
These songs derive some mean-
ing from context, and Prine often
approaches their subjects with
angles of humor, political criti-
cism, or both. This narrow, spe-
cific style of execution, and the
necessity of context here, may be a
few of the reasons Prine is looked
back on less frequently than some
of his peers. It sometimes takes a
certain mood to appreciate these
qualities, which can reasonably
set them in contrast against the
often more widely relatable songs
of Cash or Dylan. But these specif-
ic lyrics are used to tell stories that
hold true emotionally even when
removed from the context of his-
tory, and they are among the many
traits that make him interesting as
a songwriter.
Folk music has some history in
political protest, and Prine car-
ries on this tradition in his music
with a markedly humorous twist,
often fixating on characters whose
extreme stories reflect ridiculous
aspects of our own lives. In his
early song “Your Flag Decal Won’t
Get You Into Heaven Anymore,”
he calls commercial patriotism
into question, narrating the story
of a man who crashes his car due
to the American flag stickers
covering his windshield. With
its cheerful tone and hyperbolic
ending, it is easy to see how a nar-
rative like this would fit along-
side Dylan’s “Talkin’ John Birch
Paranoid Blues,” or Phil Ochs’s
“Love Me, I’m a Liberal.” Some-
times Prine’s music focuses exclu-
sively on humor — like in 1973’s
“Dear Abby,” a satire of advice
columns — and sometimes it lays
the humor aside in favor of a more
serious political tone, like in his
2005 song “Some Humans Ain’t
Human,” which criticizes Presi-
dent George W. Bush for invasion
of Iraq.
Prine is a peculiar case in the
timeline of American folk music.
His personality is unassuming,
and his songs have consistently
occupied modest but dignified
positions on popular music charts
since the early seventies. But
despite his lack of mainstream
popularity, his songs offer elo-
quent, natural and at times
humorous perspectives on the
world, and given his lyrical abili-
ties and his lasting influence,
he continues to occupy a crucial
place in the world of folk music
today.
ALL THINGS RECONSIDERED
OH BOY RECORDS
When you full but meemaw packs a doggy bag.
Prine’s overlooked legacy
LAURA DZUBAY
For The Daily
“Stories are wild
creatures,” a CGI
tree mondster
tells a young
British lad
His story
itself lacks the
structure and
potency to salvage
the film from an
onslaught of poor
choices