Arts

Volume 22, Issue 19

Charles, Keys clean up at Grammys

By Mallory Medved - Copy Editor

“Medley” was the word of the night at the 47th annual Grammy Awards, as a good portion of the telecast was devoted to taking the best parts of different songs and melding them into one long performance by multiple artists.
The opening act was a five-way sing off between the Black-Eyed Peas, Gwen Stefani and Eve, Los Lonely Boys, Maroon 5 and Franz Ferdinand, and yes, it was just as bizarre as it sounds. The most surreal moment of the whole segment was just as Maroon 5 lead singer Adam Levine finished the chorus to “She Will Be Loved”. Will.i.am from the Black-Eyed Peas promptly tosses him a guitar, and Levine plays him through a verse of “Let’s Get it Started”. It was that crazy.
The ceremony, hosted by Queen Latifah, gave the first award of the night, Best Pop Duo or Group, to Los Lonely Boys for their song, “Heaven”. The Boys seemed genuinely thrilled to be up on stage, further sweetening the satisfaction I received in knowing Gwen Stefani and her creepy Japanese-girl entourage were denied a trip onstage for No Doubt’s “It’s My Life”.
In the Best Male R&B category, Prince carried away a win for “Call My Name”. Ew. How does R. Kelly keep getting nominated for things?
U2 rocked the place with their performance of “Vertigo”. My Aging Irish Rocker boyfriends brought their typical energy to their performance, though someone needs to tell Bono that cowboy hats, unless you are an actual cowboy, are no longer cool.
Green Day took home top honors for “American Idiot” in the Best Rock Album category, doing pretty well for a group I thought had broken up until a few months ago. The three bandmates flubbed their way through an endearing acceptance speech while wearing only slightly more black eyeliner than I like to see on a guy.
After that, Jennifer Lopez and Current Husband sang a duet of “Escapemonos”. I know she gets a lot of flak for being a serial bride, mediocre actress and having questionable taste in fashion, but when she puts away her diva posturing and Jenny-from-the-block whatevering, we are reminded why this woman has a career in the first place. Lopez has a beautiful voice, and it really came through in this song.
Medley Time! The Academy next paid tribute to Southern Rock with a medley of classic rock songs performed by Gretchen Wilson, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and the surviving members of Lynyrd Skynyrd, among others. I rocked out to their performance of “Sweet Home Alabama” as much as any liberal northern suburbanite should be allowed to.
Back to the actual awards. Maroon 5 received the award for Best New Artist. Hopefully, they won’t slide into the career oblivion that seems to befall many past recipients of this award. Alicia Keys won Best R&B album with “The Diary of Alicia Keys”.
In the Best Hard Rock Album award, U2 beat out such groups as Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, and Green Day for their latest work, “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. It kind of seemed like the guys were drinking heavily in the men’s room beforehand, since all four of them seemed to be very bewildered to have won. Bono especially seemed like he wanted to vomit immediately, and he’s not the kind of guy to ever turn down the chance to speak onstage.
Next came the perfunctory plea from the Academy to aid in tsunami relief efforts, followed by an all-star rendition of the Beatles’ “Across the Universe”. It was a lovely effort, but seemed too rushed, as if the ushers ran up and started pulling artists out of their seats during the break. Maybe if they had done the thing right and invested in a studio and some sound engineers, we would have had a much smoother, “We Are the World”-style tribute single.
Back in the awards portion of the ceremony, John Mayer took home Song of the Year honors for “Daughters”. OK, for future reference? Don’t wear jeans to the Grammys when you’re up for an award, like a certain Mr. Mayer. It makes you look like a tool.
Speaking of tools, Lance Armstrong and Sheryl Crow presented the next award, Record of the Year. Crow is wearing a truly hideous yellow dress with a particularly unflattering side cutout. Seriously, it looks as if she was riding bitch on the back of Armstrong’s bike to the ceremony, got the dress caught in the spokes and had a large chunk ripped out of the side as a result. File this one under “Oh, honey no.”
Record of the Year honors went to the late Ray Charles and Norah Jones for “Here We Go Again”. Jones and Charles’ manager accepted the award on his behalf. Charles’ manager had to get right up again after that, as the departed blues singer posthumously won Album of the Year for “Genius”.
Thus endeth this year’s Grammies, and I won’t be surprised if Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out” and Gwen Stefani and Eve’s “Rich Girl” run together in my head all night long.

Vagina Monologues
Play presented as part of V-Day College Campaign

By Gabrielle Wiegand - Feature Writer

“The Vagina Monologues” performance on the UIS campus is meant to create awareness in the campus community about women’s issues.

This will be the UIS Women’s Issue Caucus’ first year participating in the V-Day College Campaign. Over 700 college and university campuses around the nation will be performing Eve Ensler’s play, “The Vagina Monologues,” around Feb. 14, also known as V-Day, a day created by Ensler to generate consciousness about violence against women and girls.

According to Candi Clouse, the President of WIC and Coordinator of UIS-WIC V-Day College Campaign, universities are able to do the performance right/royalty free in exchange for donating 10 percent of their profits to the V-Day organization’s chosen charity, the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq.

The remainder of the proceeds will go to WIC as well as the Sojourn Shelter, a women and children’s shelter for domestic violence, and the Prairie Center Against Sexual Assault, a rape crisis center.

“The Vagina Monologues” is a play based on interviews with many different women that touches on topics such as rape, sexual harassment, a girls’ first period, a first sexual experience and other topics. It is student produced and directed presentation and will star 13 students.

“We have CAP Scholars as well as undergraduate and graduate students (in the performance). We have mothers and grandmothers in the show. Some have no stage experience,” said Clouse.

“The wonderful thing about “The Vagina Monologues” is that the focus is not on the "acting." It is about story-telling. It gives voice to real women's deepest fantasies and fears, guaranteeing that no one who sees it will ever look at a woman's body, or think of sex, in quite the same way again.”

Before the performance on March 5 there will a discussion in the UIS Visual Arts Gallery by the cast. This event will be free to UIS students as well as a reception in the PAC restaurant immediately following the performance.

The WIC will be honoring three women at the end of the show, one from each of the groups participating in this V-Day on the UIS campus- Prairie Center, Sojourn and WIC.

The V-Day movement “has been led by fierce, passionate and generous women working to end violence against women and girls in their communities,” said Clouse.

“They are Vagina Warriors (and) we will honor and celebrate our own Vagina Warriors. They are women who are making a difference, who are changing the paradigm and perception of violence against women, who are leading our community to a better future.”

Clouse said they are very excited to join in this national campaign. “The feedback we have received thus far from the campus community has been very positive and encouraging.”

“The Vagina Monologues” is being shown in the Studio Theater Saturday, March 5 at 8p.m. General admission tickets are $25. UIS students are eligible for a discounted ticket price of $11.25. Tickets may be purchased through the Sangamon Auditorium at 206-6160 or online at www.sangamonauditorium.org. Student tickets may only be purchased at the Ticket Office.

Yeshiva of Rock
Sex, drugs & rock-n-roll in ‘The Holy Land’

By Brian Mackey - Feature Writer

A Jew, a Muslim and a Christian walk into a bar...
That is the basic premise of “The Holy Land,” a 2001 film that aspires to tell the story of — among others — the prodigal son.
Mendy is an Orthodox Jew studying at a yeshiva, though he appears to spend more time thinking about sex than the Talmud. When his instructor, Reb Nochom, finds Mendy sneak-reading a torrid novel instead of the Torah, Nochom tells Mendy he has an idea of how to refocus his mind.
It seems there is a little-known section of Jewish law that encourages the sex-distracted student to visit a brothel in a town where no one will recognize him.
Mendy’s American mother and traditional Israeli father give permission for him to travel to Jerusalem, ostensibly to reignite his religious spark in the holiest of cities.
“In Jerusalem, you feel God everywhere,” his father says.
Mendy immediately visits a strip club/massage parlor, something that apparently became quite common in the wake of the flood of post-Soviet immigration. Sasha, a beautiful Ukrainian immigrant, gives him a massage — with release — and Mendy is in love.
He was already straying from the path of the righteous, smoking and drinking, but this evening seemed to be a giant leap forward (or backwards, depending on one’s perspective). It culminates when he meets Mike, an American war photographer who came to Israel to photograph the first Intifada and Gulf War. Mike now runs a bar that seems to be the closest thing to a United Nations presence in Jerusalem.
With a cast of regulars that includes two priests who seem more like pirates than padres, a professor who tries to hit on uninterested young women by talking smart, and Razi, an Arab with enough permits to move relatively freely past Israeli checkpoints.
Mendy appears to have given up his studies, and while he has not lost his faith in God, his religious practice has certainly suffered. Still, he is conflicted about his new life, sometimes sneaking prayers before eating, but still breaking just about every other proscription short of eating a ham on rye.
Mendy and his new pan-religious, pan-ethnic crew have several adventures in Jerusalem, all leading to a ending that writer-director Eitan Gorlin did not earn the right to tack onto the story.
The film was made in 2000, around the time when Ariel Sharon and his armed guards visited the Al-Aqsa mosque, also Judaism’s Temple Mount site, and the second Intifada began in earnest.
Perhaps because of the filming schedule, that second uprising barely registers in this film. There is a scene where Mendy is scolded for leaving his backpack a few too many feet from him, because every abandoned parcel is a potential bomb. He sees Mike’s pictures from the first Intifada, where the defining images were not suicide bombers but kids throwing rocks at the rifle-wielding Israeli Defense Forces, but it leaves little impression on either Mendy or us.
As a prodigal son, Mendy must choose between his faith and his new life, between his hooker and his God, but unfortunately that is not all Gorlin has in store for him. I shall not reveal the ending here, but when you are watching it, ask yourself, is this the only way these characters could have acted? Do their actions even make sense in light of their characters in the rest of the film?
The cinematography casts its eye on the underside of the holy land, the places where tour busses do not stop, as Gorlin once told an interviewer. Looking through this film’s lens, one is left wonder where the tour busses would stop. Gorlin’s Israel is an arid, beige wasteland that hardly seems capable of supporting life. Sadly, the same can be said for his screenplay.

“The Holy Land” will be shown this Thursday and Friday at 7:00 p.m. in Brookens Auditorium. The screening is sponsored by the Division of Student Affairs through the Independent & Foreign Film Series; admission is free. Running time: 102 minutes. The film is rated R for sexual content, language and some drug use. In English, with some Russian, Hebrew and Arabic with English subtitles.

Two friends veer “Sideways” on a road trip through wine country

By Gabrielle Wiegand - Feature Writer

I do not think many people had heard of the film “Sideways” until the Academy Award nominations came out in the end of January. My curiosity was immediately peeked when they received five Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
I had to find out for myself if this unheard of movie was really that good, and to my surprise, it was. To sum up my reactions- TOTALLY worth the $6.75.
“Sideways,” an adaptation of Rex Pickett’s novel, follows two friends on a trip through California wine country. Miles, played really beautifully by Paul Giamatti (“Private Parts,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “The Truman Show,” “Paycheck”), is a Junior High English teacher and would be novelist.
He is a complete wine snob (someone in the film mentioned ordering Merlot, and no joke, I thought he was going to go into cardiac arrest) who has yet to recover from his divorce.
Jack, played by Thomas Haden Church (also known as Lowell Mather on “Wings”), is Miles’ old college roommate and is getting married in less then a week. Miles takes him on this trip for a week of male bonding and wine tasting. Jack, a washed up actor, is determined make the most of his last minutes of freedom.
He meets Stephanie, a rather exotic wine pourer at one of the vineyards on their road trip. Stephanie, played by Sandra Oh (“Under the Tuscan Sun” and a new ABC drama “Grey’s Anatomy”), represents to Jack all that is exciting and forbidden now that he is engaged.
The cast is rounded out by Virginia Madsen (“The Rainmaker,” “Ghosts of the Mississippi,” “Hot Spot”) who plays Maya, a wine savvy waitress who has a real connection with Miles. Unfortunately, Miles, a man riddled with anxiety, spends most of the week worrying about whether or not his latest manuscript gets picked up by a publisher and obsessing over the fact that his ex-wire got remarried.
The fifth main character in “Sideways” is the wine. It takes on a life of its own as it bringing friends and lovers together and then also pulls them apart.
In addition to being nominated for Best Motion Picture, “Sideways” was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Haden Church), Best Adapted Screenplay (Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor), Best Director (Alexander Payne) and Best Supporting Actress (Virginia Madsen).
“Sideways” was overall an excellent film. It was a very funny story filled with bittersweetly sad characters. Jack and Miles are two washed up guys who have nothing to show for their lives but good intentions and failed dreams. You cannot help but feel sad for them while simultaneously enjoying their plight, because they make it so comical.
The acting was impeccable, especially that done by Paul Giamatti. Giamatti can next be seen in Ron Howard’s “The Cinderella Man” with Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger (on a side note, I actually teared up when I watched the trailer for this film; it looks like a good one).
“Sideways” was directed and co-written by Alexander Payne. His co-screenwriter, Jim Taylor, collaborated with Payne on his three prior films, “Citizen Ruth,” “Election,” and “About Schmidt.” Their next project is an upcoming film entitled “The Assassination of Richard Nixon.”
“Sideways” is 133 minutes. It is rate R for language, some strong sexual content, and nudity.

Grade: A