CONGRATULATIONS
200
200

To our 31E scholars on the 
35th anniversary 

of our class of 1931 Engineering Scholarship Program

The class of ‘31E and its Scholarship Selection Committee Congratulates and welcomes their SIX 
new scholarship winners for the 2017-2018 academic year:

JOSEPH COSTELLO
ERIN DEUTSCHMAN
TAYLOR FEDDERSEN

AMBRIA HOPFE
MICHAEL KLETTNER
JOSEPH TAYLOR

They will be joining the ‘31E HONOR SOCIETY and our THIRTEEN current scholars:

George E. Anderson | Director of Media Relations | Class of 1931 Engineering 

All of these scholarship winners will be honored at the 86th Annual Reunion Dinner of the Class 
of ‘31E, which will be held at the Four Points Sheraton Inn, Ann Arbor, Mich. on Friday evening,
October 27th, 2017 at 5:30 PM.

Since the establishment of the ‘31E Scholarship Program in 1982, more than 200 aspiring
engineering students have been helped to experience a University of Michigan education and have 
gone on to rewarding careers.

ADONIS JOHNSON
JOCELYN MARCHYOK
HALEY PROUT
GRAYSON RICE
ARIEL SANDBERG
CODY SYMONS
GARRETT ZUCK

DOMINIK KONIK
DANIEL PIPPEN
ROHAN PUNNOOSE
MARIO RUSSO
RAYMOND SMITH-BYRD
PHILLIP YANG

Watching 
the 
popularity 

of The Front Bottoms rocket 
over the past year has been 
downright jarring for me to 
watch. A band marked by 
their quirky and warm lyrical 
stylings, they were the last 
group I expected to end up 
opening for massively popular 
bands like Brand New and 
blink-182 when I discovered 
them nearly six years ago. I 
say this not out of malice, but 
rather because they felt like 
such a niche secret deeply 
nestled into my adolescent 
music taste. Now as a junior 
in college, I’ve seen The Front 
Bottoms grow from playing 

club shows to massive music 
festivals with thousands of 
people singing along.

Last 
Thursday, 
The 

Michigan Daily spoke with lead 
singer and songwriter Brian 
Sella about the band’s newest 
record, Going Grey, and their 
current headlining tour with 
diverse support from the UK’s 
best punk rockers in Basement 
and beautiful ambient indie 
rock from Bad Bad Hats.

The Michigan Daily: To 

start off, could you tell me a 
little bit about your experience 
with watching your crowds 
and fan base grow as you’ve 
transitioned 
from 
playing 

clubs 
to 
theaters, 
festival 

stages and opening for bands 
like blink-182?

Sella: 
Yeah, 
absolutely, 

it’s been incredible. It’s been 
sort of a slow build. It’s been 
easy kind of to adjust to. You 
know, you always get nervous, 
but like you said, we played in 
basements, in small clubs, in 
small bars. And then it was like 
we’d play those same stops for 
like years, years at a time, like 
four or five years. And when 
we first started playing them 
there would literally be one 
to 10 people there. And by the 
time we put out more material 
and came back a few times, all 
of a sudden there’d be a few 
hundred people. That kind of 
just feels great, you know, to 
make an art project and then 
go out and play it for people 

and have people appreciate it 
and respect it enough to like 
come out and take their time 
to enjoy themselves at a show. 
And now we’re playing today at 
the House of Blues in Boston, 
Massachusetts, and I think it’s 
a sold out show. It’s just like a 
total trip. I feel so lucky to be 
able to do it… it’s really insane. 
It’s sort of hard to explain, 
but it’s a very nice feeling. It 
feels very positive, and I feel 
very lucky that it’s grown to 
the level that it’s at. And it’s 
not like a ridiculous level, you 
know, it’s not like thousands 
and 
thousands 
of 
people 

coming to see us play. So, it’s 
nice, you know, it’s a nice sort 
of, it’s a good vibe still.

TMD: Are there any songs 

you’re excited to play live?

Sella: We’re going to open 

the set with the first song on 
the new album, “You Used 
to Say,” and we’re going to 
close the set with the last 
song (“Ocean”) on the new 
album, so I’m very excited to 
be able to sandwich the set. 
And in between that we’re 
going to play 20 songs from all 
the albums. I’m excited to do 
“Ocean,” “Holy Fuck” and then 
also I’m very excited to play 
“Grand Finale,” because it’s 
going to sound very big, and 
it’s going to fill up the room. 
So, I’m definitely excited about 
playing those.

TMD: 
Going 
off 
of 

bookending your sets, I noticed 
Going Grey is bookended with 
coastal sounds like waves and 
birds. Is there any overarching 
narrative or theme to the album 
that you feel isn’t immediately 
obvious?

Sella: I feel like it is pretty 

immediately obvious. I thought 
it was pretty punk rock to have 
a very long, sort of cinematic 
intro to the album. Basically 
the idea with that was like the 
themes of vacation: “Vacation 
Town” that whole idea… and 
how it ends with the song 
“Ocean.” So that was kind of 
the idea behind that, to do like a 
cinematic, kind of book end the 
front and back of the album. If 
you play it on a loop, it’ll sync 
up perfectly so it’ll be a perfect 
loop around. Also, the song 
“Vacation Town” has a little 
weird intro that if you play 
that song on loop it’s a perfect 
circle. You won’t be able to tell 
where the start and end is. So it 
was kind of just an artistic idea 
that I think kind of added a lot 
to the atmosphere of the album 
and kind of puts you in that 
mindset when you hear those 
seagulls squawk, and you can 
kind of like paint the picture 
in your own mind. That’s how 
you can listen to the album as 
an individual.

TMD: Were your goals for 

this album different than your 
first release (Back On Top) on 
Fueled By Ramen?

Sella: You know, I never 

really know what the album 
is going to sound like when I 
start recording it. So it’s sort of 
hard to have a vision or goals. 
I think I just wanted to keep 
expanding. I wanted to develop 
naturally. I didn’t want to force 
anything, and I wanted to make 
songs that we could come out 
and play live. That’s the most 
important part. That’s really 
the most important expression 
is playing it live. And I think 
that we did that.

TMD: Did you have any 

influences while writing Going 
Grey?

Sella: I listen to a lot of 

radio, like kind of top 40 radio. 
Some old school pop music. I 
was trying to make a modern 

pop album to be honest. That 
was kind of like the vibe and 
inspiration I was going for. 
The way we were recording 
it was in three day sessions. 
So that was kind of the most 
comfortable type of music 
to make. It was just kind of 
like fun and relaxed. It was 
good, and I liked it. I keep the 
lyrics freaky, that’s kind of my 
signature thing, but that’s kind 
of how it went.

TMD: To close out, if you 

could can you describe a 
Front Bottoms performance to 
someone who has never seen 
your band before?

Sella: I would say fun, and 

I would say loose. I think 
that 
nowadays 
with 
live 

performance, because a lot of 
people are using tracks, and a 
lot of “bands” quote-unquote, 
you know they’re not — it 
doesn’t seem like they’re really 
up there, whatever, having a 
good time. For us, when we 
get up on stage, we’re straight 
up. We’re up there. We might 
as well be in the audience, 
because that’s kind of the loose 
style that we have. If the song’s 
not going good, I’ll stop the 
song, and we’ll play a different 
one. It’s just very loose overall. 
We want to have fun. We want 
to have as much fun as the 
people in the audience. That’s 
the atmosphere that we try to 
create.

6A — Monday, October 23, 2017
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

‘The Snowman’ did not experience box office success
‘Snowman’ disappoints in 
nearly every way & shape

New horror film fails to captivate the audience, melts in shame

If you’ve ever been in an 

airport convenience store then 
you’re probably familiar with 
the brand of Scandinavian 
crime-noir 
bestsellers 
from 

authors such as Stieg Larsson 
and Jo Nesbø. Adapted from 
Nesbø’s novel of the same 
name, 
Tomas 
Alfredson’s 

(“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”) 
“The 
Snowman” 
follows 

the 
unfortunately 
named 

Inspector Harry Hole as he 
chases a body-dismembering, 
snowman-building 
serial 

killer. At first glance, “The 
Snowman” has all the makings 
of a crime-thriller blockbuster; 
its cast is laden with talent, 
including Michael Fassbender 
(“12 
Years 
A 
Slave”) 
and 

J.K. Simmons (“Whiplash”). 
The source material is an 
international bestseller, and 
director 
Tomas 
Alfredson 

has proven capable on past 
projects. The result, however, 
is a two hour long mess that 
stumbles haphazardly through 
its story while managing to 
remain as turgid and lifeless as 
the icy landscapes it portrays.

The film’s cardinal sin is 

its dialogue and character 
interactions, 
which 
are 

uncomfortable 
and 
clunky. 

Fassbender 
plays 
Harry 

Hole, a grizzled, rules-averse 
detective 
with 
a 
penchant 

for sleeping on the ground in 
public and generally behaving 
like no other person in the 
history of the human race. 
In one particularly laughable 
scene, the solemn and stoic 
Inspector Hole walks to his 
ex-girlfriend’s place of work 
so he can stand outside her 
window and … stare at her? 
In another, a Bergen detective 
played by Val Kilmer (“Top 
Gun”) stares silently at a 

murder 
witness 
while 
she 

recounts 
her 
story. 
When 

Kilmer does reply, his voice has 
been dubbed over and the audio 
doesn’t quite match his lips. 
Just about every interaction in 
“The Snowman” is coated in a 
thick layer of awkward — and 
the cast, for all its raw talent, is 
unable to salvage the film.

If this weren’t enough, the 

story is a tangled mess of red 
herrings, loose ends and utter 
nonsense. The pacing feels 
as if there were 
entire scenes cut 
out from the film, 
which 
Anderson 

confirmed 
— 

nearly 10 to 15 
percent 
of 
the 

script was never 
filmed. 
This 

is 
made 
even 

stranger by the 
fact that much of 
what is present 
feels 
completely 

non-essential 
— most of the 
film is just people talking 
and 
Michael 
Fassbender 

trudging sulkily around Oslo. 
The actual “action” scenes 
are 
frustratingly 
deja-vu 

inducing as several women 
are marked for death with 
omens that, no matter how 
starkly portrayed, are more 
laughable than scary. These 
include building a snowman 
outside a victim’s house, or 
throwing a snowball at her 
as she walks home. The film 
seems unable to consistently 
follow its own story, often 
introducing characters only to 
have them never appear again, 
or having Harry Hole recieve 
cryptic riddles from the killer 
that are never solved. The film 
repeatedly 
makes 
massive 

jumps in logic and reason, 
leaving its audience in the dust.

Perhaps the only thing that 

can be said in favor of “The 

Snowman” is that it has one 
or two visually compelling 
moments, however even these 
feel stylistically out of place. 
The opening sequence features 
a chase scene with side shots 
of cars crossing a bridge that 
feels as if it were ripped from 
a Wes Anderson film. Later 
in the film, a conversation 
is shot from the outside of a 
moving train. Scenes like this, 
while 
impressive 
on 
their 

own, feel less like valuable 

additions to the 
film and more like 
reminders 
that 

cinematographer 
Dion Beebe (“Edge 
of 
Tomorrow”) 

would 
rather 

be 
working 
on 

something 
else. 

These scenes seem 
to jump out of the 
texture of a film 
that is otherwise 
visually 
bland. 

While there are 
occasionally 

pleasant shots of Norway’s 
fjords 
and 
mountains, 
the 

majority of the film is bogged 
down in a version of Oslo 
plagued by an omnipresent 
color palette consisting almost 
entirely of white and gray.

At 
its 
conclusion, 
“The 

Snowman” sees Harry Hole 
back on the Oslo police force, 
volunteering to take up a case 
that some poor, misguided 
producer likely hoped would 
turn into a sequel. Fortunately, 
the 
film’s 
underwhelming 

box office performance of $10 
million worldwide means that 
this is likely the last viewers 
will see of Fassbender’s Harry 
Hole; a fate that is decidedly 
for the best. Tomas Anderson’s 
perfect storm of disastrous 
storytelling and writing will 
at best be remembered as 
“hilariously bad.”

MAX MICHALSKY

For the Daily

FUELED BY RAMEN

Brian Stella is the lead singer and songwriter for The Front Bottoms
Brian Sella of The Front 
Bottoms on ‘Going Grey’

The singer and songwriter talks growth, tours & the new album

DOMINIC POLSINELLI

Daily Arts Writer

FILM REVIEW
ARTIST PROFILE

‘The 

Snowman’

GQT Quality 

16, Rave 
Cinemas

Universal 
Pictures

When we first 
started playing 

them there would 
literally be one to 
10 people there

 I was trying to 
make a modern 
pop album to 
be honest. That 
was kind of like 

the vibe and 

inspiration I was 

going for

