Recently, I went to my friend’s house to help him set up for a party. He and his roommates were getting a little drowsy, so they put on their hype song. As they started belting out Wicked’s “Defying Gravity,” I realized just how much I missed listening to musicals. I wouldn’t exactly call them my “hype songs,” but they certainly have something to them that really gets me energized. I missed that. From the moment Elphaba picked up the tempo and hit those beautiful high notes we all know and love, I knew I was hooked. I found myself joining in, pretending I was a much better singer than I am, serenading my friend.
That night, I opened my computer and went straight to my musicals playlist. I turned up the volume to full blast, hit shuffle, and let the music begin. I sang and danced to myself until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. Then, I went to sleep with the sounds of Finding Neverland floating around my mind. When I woke up the next morning, I did it again.
And again.
And again.
Instead of jumping around to One Direction or Justin Bieber’s new albums, I listened to musicals all week. And I’m not even the slightest bit upset.
You see, there’s something very magical about putting on the soundtrack to your favorite musical. You can listen to a whole story in just one sitting. You can feel the ups and downs of the characters without even watching their motions. Musicals have the ability to just make you happy, and as my roommate puts it, “there’s something about singing along that’s different than singing along to normal music.” Who doesn’t want a change up every once in a while, anyway?
So whether you were first turned on to musicals watching Julie Andrews run down a hill with her arms outstretched, or Gene Kelly’s umbrella twirling and splashing got you on your feet, a musical has the ability to make a bad day better. There’s one out there for everyone, so go find the one that makes you smile and make it yours!
This week has been a monster filled with to-do lists, late nights and early mornings, which is why I definitely should not have started Aziz Ansari’s new Netflix series, Master of None. And yet there I was last night, telling myself that if I just watched the first episode while eating dinner, it would be fine! Because how much could I get done when my hands were otherwise occupied by feta bread from Pizza House anyways? (Shout-out to my roommate for only slightly guilting me into stopping there for her student org’s fundraiser.)
If you’ve talked to me in the last 24 hours, you are probably not surprised that I am once again talking about this show, because I have grasped at so many straws today in order to bring it up in conversation. I’m not playing – I brought it up in a Women’s Studies class. To make a serious point. That’s how geeked I am about this show.
The first episode in the series, appropriately titled Plan B, starts off with a casual hook-up for main character Dev, played by Aziz, that culminates in an uber ride to the drug store to pick up the morning-after pill. The scene serves as an intriguing look at the lives of our generation and our reliance on technology, showing the two characters Googling whether or not his hook-up could get pregnant and then calling an uber X to pick them up, all while still undressed and under the covers.
The main character is then sent down a rabbit hole full of babies, trying to figure out if he should be thinking of settling down and starting a family. He attends a birthday party for his friend’s baby (but only for the bounce house, of course) where he gets a look at the beauty of parenthood, only to see the other side of the coin when he babysits his friend’s devilish children later in the day. When I say devilish….this woman’s 7 year old son took out his genitals at the grocery store and rubbed it on 30 boxes of frozen waffles because “it feels good!”
At the end of the day, Dev is left exhausted and the viewer is left with a more moderate view of parenthood, which is generous for a show created by Aziz, who spent half of his newest comedy show talking about how awful the concept of parenthood is. We learn that Dev is definitely not ready to have children (as alluded to by the numerous instances in the episode where his actions mirrored those of a child), but that parenthood in general is a collection of wonderful and hair-pulling experiences.
I went into this show expecting something larger-than-life out of a comedian who screams half of his punchlines (I love you Aziz, I promise I do), but what I was with was a show created by a super intelligent dude full of social commentary. He touches on some really interesting issues and brings a fresh take to some issues that some might think have been talked dry. It’s the kind of show that you start for the laughs and stay with for the message, which is why I think that it will reach a broader audience than some of his stand-up.
I would definitely recommend this show, so I’ll leave the trailer here:
(Shoutout to Dev Patel from Meet the Patels, and also Aziz Ansari’s real dad who plays his father on the show)
There are too many interesting things about “Palo Alto” to write it off completely, but not enough coherence or real substance to ever really fall in love with it.
To start off, the performances are pretty great. I’m used to seeing Emma Roberts as the gloriously bitchy characters of Ryan Murphy’s shows (“American Horror Story” and “Scream Queens”), but it turns out Roberts is surprisingly good at playing the shy introvert. As her character, April, awkwardly says goodbye to her love interest Teddy (Jack Kilmer) and says she’ll call him, she follows up the promise with a funny expression of self-loathing and embarrassment that instantly makes her endearing. Nat Wolff, in the supporting role of Fred, is given way more emotions to play than his bland soft-spoken protagonist in “Paper Towns.” Both as a figure of hilariously obnoxious comic relief and as one of the film’s antagonists, Wolff is a standout.
Coppola has clearly inherited the directorial prowess of her famous filmmaking family; the whole movie is shot so well, especially with Autumn Durald’s cinematography. With the help of Devonté Hynes’s strong score, Coppola imbues every scene with feeling. The movie is great at crafting images and creating a feeling in the viewer. There are some scenes towards the end, especially an encounter between Fred and a drug dealer, that are surprisingly tense, and there are several sex scenes that are disturbing to watch. When April loses her virginity to Mr. B (James Franco), her soccer coach, the scene is shot evocatively, with surreal close-ups of April’s face repeatedly being swept over with black. It’s one of the most horrifying sex scenes I’ve seen in recent memory.
As great as Coppola is at conveying desperation, horror, and shame, I couldn’t help but get the suspicion that all this great camerawork was covering up a lack of substance. Now, I’m a believer that just because a feeling is achieved through aesthetics doesn’t mean it isn’t genuine—there are plenty of stories with average screenplays that enter the cinematic canon because of their directorial work—so the knowledge that the visual and auditory elements of the film were covering up some spotty writing didn’t make the emotional impact feel illusory to me. That said, it did make it easy for my mind to drift away from the narrative now and then.
The main reason for that, I think, is that there isn’t really a central narrative. The movie is ostensibly about the relationship between April and Mr. B, and there’s certainly a great movie buried somewhere in there about a deeply problematic teacher-student relationship. But surprisingly few scenes are devoted to this central plot because the movie makes the mistake of toggling constantly between April’s narrative, Teddy’s narrative, Fred’s, and supporting character Emily’s (Zoe Levin). Right when I became really wrapped up in the creepy April-Mr. B dynamic, the movie backed off April and returned to Teddy. Teddy’s story is the most unimaginative—he has to do community service after drunkenly getting into a car accident, but he mostly just sulks around, smokes weed, and navel-gazes—but I still got into his story after watching him for a few consecutive scenes…and then, right when I became interested, the movie skipped over to Fred and Emily. All of these stories have such strong potential, especially because Fred and Emily have a horrifying history; at some unspecified party, Fred undressed her and guided groups of guys into the room to, effectively, rape her. But skipping around meant I never had the chance to really focus on any story and become invested. And since each got equal screen time, they were all a bit shallower than they could’ve been. “Palo Alto” is adapted from James Franco’s book of short stories, so maybe this explains it—Coppola probably should’ve focused either on April or Emily exclusively as protagonists, but she tries to cram too much into one movie.
In fact, the movie has to keep creating party sequences to find excuses for all the main characters to be in the same place at the same time. Maybe this would’ve been more effective if Coppola had focused exclusively on one night, like “Dazed and Confused,” but instead it seems like each party scene is designed to finally bring the disparate narratives together. In those scenes, the movies floats the inevitable idea of a romantic relationship between April and Teddy; he’s clearly supposed to be the ‘right guy’ who she ends up with once she realizes how creepy Mr. B is. There’s something rote about the idea of a romance between them, though, so I’m glad that the movie ended by leaving it mildly ambiguous, at least. Also, I can’t complain too much about the party scenes, because they do a great job of putting you in the setting of a realistic high school party. I particularly like the shot of Teddy throwing up outside and Emily rubbing his back, asking him if he’s okay and only getting an embarrassed “shut up” in response. Same goes for the shot of Emily staring at herself in the mirror, post-blowjob, with the muffled sounds of the party in the background.
Gia Coppola clearly has a lot of talent, especially as a director. She has a keen understanding of how to elicit emotions through images and sounds, so it’d be wrong to dismiss the movie entirely because of some structural messiness. Still, there were too many moments throughout the movie when I wondered, Where is this all going? What’s the central story here? Last week’s “Funny Ha Ha” proved that I’m okay with plotlessness, but don’t tease me with four central narratives and only half-commit to each of them.
We are in need of a revolution. No, I’m not talking Bernie Sanders; no, this is a revolution in creativity. To remind ourselves that art is a vital aspect of hope and that we must utilize it if we want to change the way that we view the world.
It seems like every time I open a new webpage these days, I’m flooded with Facebook fights over colors of coffee cups, posts of people taking pictures of their cell phones in dingy bathroom mirrors, presidential candidates talking talking talking without any action, and terrible acts of hatred pockmarking this earth, scarring it, destroying it.
Keep scrolling and it’s a wonder why we’ve all become so cynical of the world. Yes, it’s important to keep a finger on the news, but when we get so bogged down with it, is there any hope of returning from the deep end?
I believe there is, and so I’ve decided to start bringing hope to the world in my own little way. And that way is through art.
At the beginning of the school year, I stumbled upon a few blogs that dedicate themselves to exploring art and other visual cultures, such as photography, design, animation, painting, installation art, architecture, drawing, and street art. These blogs, such as Colossal, My Modern Met, and Laughing Squid to name a few, are already doing what I want to do: they are hunting down all of the amazingly innovative and passionate and beautiful things that people globally are creating and sharing with the world.
I want to bring it closer to home, and share these little nuggets of inspiration and hope with my world. About once a day, I try to share at least one link to Facebook, highlighting anything from:
Throughout the constant scrolling of anger and suffering and irritation at the world, I hope that these posts remind my friends that art can be powerful. It can lift us up, it can bring us together, it can confuse us and spur heated conversations in their own way, it can be magical, it can be an escape. But most of all, it is a way to communicate with the world in a non-violent way. It’s a way to tell people that they have the ability to create beauty, to change people’s thinking, to challenge the way that they see the world. To remind people that among the bad, there is good stuff happening, too.
Take the events that happened Friday night in Paris. Jean Jullien’s simplistic image of the Eiffel Tower holding up a circle of peace went viral within 12 hours.
Peace for Paris – Jean Jullien
In an interview with NPR, Jullien says, “I turned on the French radio. I heard that there was an attack, and my first reaction was to draw. It’s this sort of moment where you don’t necessarily try to understand everything coherently. It’s more of a state of shock and sadness and anger and all these very sort of raw feelings. So for me, it’s just sort of trying to summarize these feelings in one image with my way of reacting,” Jullien says. “I shared it online as a reaction, not really thought through at all.”
What’s interesting is that he didn’t want it to be viral. He felt uncomfortable being in the spotlight as the “creator,” benefitting from exposure during this time of tragedy. But, his reaction achieved the revolution that he had hoped.
Jullien says, “The idea was just for people to have a tool to communicate, and to respond and to share solidarity and peace. It seems that’s what most people got out of it. So in that sense, if it was useful for people to share and communicate their loss and need for peace, then that’s what it was meant to be.”
The takeaway? The size of the action doesn’t matter: it can be a larger-than-life fabric flower that lights up at night; a powerfully minimal black and white peace sign, or a simple Facebook share. All that’s important is that the art brings people together, it makes them notice what’s going on around them, it makes them feel agency in the world, that they can make a difference by doing something. This Earth is amazing, yes in a tragic way that it can be so self-destructive, but mostly, because of the billions of people who have the power to share a little art with the world in any way or form that they can.
P.S. Sharing art is wonderful and definitely can lift people’s spirits and hearts. But, generous donations can also provide resources and necessities that human beings require. Please if you can, support the French Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, or Friends of Fondation de France, Inc. Thank you!
“Pushing Daisies” is a murder-mystery comedy television show created by Bryan Fuller that I think everyone should watch and enjoy. It is a two season, 22 episode long series starring Lee Pace, Anna Friel, Chi McBride, and Kristen Chenowith. With this short runtime, amazing cast, and leading by one of the most critically acclaimed television creators of our time, I am amazed that more people have not watched it.
I started watching the show first when it started airing in 2007. The comercials made it seem like a quirky, funny, vibrant show and Bryan Fuller was able to deliver that flawlessly. This is exactly what I was looking for from television at this time and I fell in love. The story was engaging, the sets were gorgeous and the actors were beyond compare. So rarely do these three factors come together so amazingly like they did for this show. I will admit that I was little concerned that maybe I had built the show up too much, but when I started rewatching the box set again recently, all my emotions and love for the show came rushing back.
Lets first look at the design and aesthetics of the show. Bryan Fuller is known for his inventive use of color and using it to portray the themes and mental states of the characters. Look towards “Hannibal’s” amazing uses of reds, blacks, and whites to see an example of this. “Pushing Daisies” also does this, but with a lot more vibrancy. It mostly utilizes greens and yellows, but all the colors in this show are splendid and surprising. From the bright orange morgue to the intense cherry red lights in the Pie Hole, the colors really help to create the universe. From the very first look into the show, we know that this is a different, more colorful universe and the situation within it will be far from normal. This sort of universe building through colors is an expertise that we don’t often see right now as TV likes to now focus on dirt and grime.
Now onto the characters. I have never found characters that I have loved more or had more fun with than the characters in this show. I still have a crush on Lee Pace because of his portrayal of Ned, the Pie-maker. His character is awkward, endearing, and intensely caring. Lee Pace was perfectly cast as he was able to perfectly mix these characteristics into a believable and likable three-dimensional character. In addition Charlotte “Chuck” Charles was also an amazing character. She eventually became the backbone and heart of the trio that was formed between her, Ned, and Emerson Cod (portrayed by Chi McBride). In a great deconstruction of the trope of being the female and heart of the group, she also the strongest, most inquisitive, and most daring member as well, becoming a true center for the show to revolve around. And finally, I would be remiss if I did not discuss Olive Snook, portrayed by Kristin Chenowith. This character is the underdog of the show, but also one of the favorites. She is not a part of the trio that forms, but she is a secondary character that helps when needed. Much of the great comedy from the show comes from Chenowith’s amazing acting and the few musical numbers that they sprinkle in really bring the character to life.
While all of this is great, the story is also something to behold. The story is about Ned, the Pie-maker who has the ability to bring back the dead, with some few restrictions: if they are back for more than 60 seconds, someone else has to die in their place, and if Ned touches them a second time, they are dead forever. While this sounds like the beginning to a dark drama, the show is amazingly bright and humorous. Emerson Cod, a private detective, learns about Ned’s ability and ropes in to his business. Ned wakes the dead long enough to find their murderer and Cod collects the money. Eventually, the victim is Ned’s childhood love, Charlotte “Chuck” Charles. During this investigation, Ned can’t bring himself to kill Charlotte and so she lives with him (with no touching) and comes to help Ned and Emerson with their investigations. As you can probably tell from the description, this is a wildly inventive show and something I can guarantee you have never seen before.
If you have the free time to start a new series, I highly recommend this one. It is something that I have just started rewatching myself and I am still as in love with it as I was when I first started watching it. With only 22, 42 minute long episode, you could finish it in a weekend.
I have never been the type of person to walk around with ear buds buried in my ears, barely aware of the noises of the world that surround me. I have subscribed to the belief that the need for constant stimulation is not a sign of boredom but fear – the fear of being left alone with ones thoughts and where their mind might go if they allow it to wander. Yet, following the rediscovery of my iPod nano (a first generation vintage classic which was never lost, rather stored in a really, really safe place) I have found myself reaching into my pocket nearly every time I leave a building, unwrapping my earbuds from around it and hitting play as I make my way to my next destination.
A year ago, I barely ever had an iPod on me and since my phone has only enough memory for a maximum of two apps and a few texts at a time, I have never used my phone to listen to music. Yet, as I began to drive to between Ann Arbor and Chicago on a biweekly basis this past summer, I tired of the Top 40 hits that were played over and over and over again on the radio. So, switched to hooking up my iPod to my car’s stereo allowing me the ability to listen to something other than “Can’t Feel My Face” and “Cheerleader” for four hours straight.
I fell in love with listening to the free Freakonomics Podcasts and feeling productive during those hours with my hands on the wheel. When school started, I figured why not continue using that typically unproductive transportation time to learn something. I found myself first using my iPod only with my car’s stereo as I drove to school, then on my ten minute walks from the Orange lot to the EECS building, and now I find that it has become a habit, that more often than not I am walking with earbuds unwrapped, inserted and allowing my podcasts and music to flow from my iPod to my brain.
While it has been a more productive use of transportation time, I must wonder what I am giving up. Those moments of quite respite between classes and homework that allow my brain to recharge – what effect has losing those had on me these past few weeks? I don’t have an exact answer to that question, but I feel that this constant state of being “plugged-in” has to negatively effect me in some manner – that the constant bombardment of my brain with music or words with no time to recharge hinders my creativity and my ability to function at a high level academically and musically. Perhaps it doesn’t, and I’ve bought into too many studies that have made wild and inappropriate conjectures from there result, but just in case I think now is a good time to unplug and store my iPod in another super safe place.
