Category: Arts

This year’s remake of Beauty and the Beast revives a classic story with which most of us are familiar, in which the young Belle sacrifices herself for a life of captivity in order to save her father, only to end up falling in love with her captor. Long ago cursed by an enchantress, this prince has been trapped in the form of an animal-like Beast, and his household servants have been turned into animated pieces of furniture. Belle befriends the furniture, falls for the Beast, and ultimately helps defend the isolated castle against the attack of the villagers, led by her own scorned lover, Gaston.

When I got to the theater, I was worried that all of the good seats might be gone, but we ended up being surprised: There were so many available showtimes and theaters that everyone was able to get in without a problem. The theater we ended up in was huge and filled with audience members of all ages.

I ultimately thought the movie was really entertaining. Everyone left the theater talking about how much this version had lived up to their expectations, and making comparisons between this and the classic animated movie. These comparisons are definitely fair, especially considering how so many of us grew up with that movie.

Personally, I thought this version was a worthwhile new addition to the legend. It didn’t contribute a ton of meaning that wasn’t already there in the first one, but it was fun to see the story brought to life in live action, and it did fill in the plot hole about what happened to Belle’s mother so many years ago. It was satisfying to see LeFou’s true feelings for Gaston recognized, and the animation of the furniture and the Beast himself worked terrifically alongside the rest of the human characters. Not to mention a girl falling in love with an animal can be a hard thing for some people to get behind, but Emma Watson and Dan Stevens did such a convincing job with the love story that by the time we got to the famous dancing-in-the-ballroom scene, everything made perfect sense.

The music was also terrific. The cast is full of talented singers, and I hadn’t paid much attention to the lyrics of the older version when I was younger, but listening to them made me understand the story a lot better this time. I couldn’t get enough of Mrs. Potts (Emma Thompson), the doting but strong teapot who looks after Belle when she is at her most uncertain, or Lumiere (Ewan MacGregor), the candlestick who retains a good attitude despite being trapped in this castle for so many years.

I ultimately found this to be a really enjoyable movie experience. It’s touching, thought-provoking, and just plain fun to watch, and anyone looking for a good retelling of this classic story is in for their money’s worth.

Tomorrow in Hill Auditorium, two renowned, award-winning contemporary music ensembles will be joining forces to present a concert honoring one of the most influential American composers, Steve Reich, for his 80th birth year.

The main feature on the program is Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, an hour-long work which, due to its musical and logistical demands, is seldom performed. Ann Arbor is extremely lucky to have Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion, which are both Chicago-based, Grammy-award-winning ensembles, come together to perform this landmark piece of minimalist repertoire!

The performance will be on Saturday, March 18th at 8pm in Hill Auditorium, with a pre-concert talk beginning at 7:30.  Buy your tickets here or at the League ticket office!

Last night, Snarky Puppy made their debut in Hill Auditorium, marking their third and most-attended performance in Ann Arbor. The group has steadily climbed in popularity over the years, and more recently, their several accolades have launched them into stardom. I guess that would explain the traffic.

The evening began with Mama Sol, the opening act from Flint, MI., who warmed up the crowd just as much as she warmed the crowd. A self-proclaimed motivational hip-hop group, Mama Sol presented a series of original rap songs and spoken word pieces, hitting on potent, personal topics ranging from embracing individuality and loving life to speaking out against our nation’s current political climate, the degrading messages found in popular entertainment, and the Flint water crisis. Everything the group shared was given from a position of love and peace, which the packed hall drank up enthusiastically.

The transition between acts was foreboding: stagehands arranged two larger-than-life drum sets which loomed over three synthesizer keyboards, 2 electric guitars, bass, and amplified trumpet, flugelhorn, and tenor saxophone. When Snarky Puppy came out, bassist Michael League counted off his other eight bandmates into an incredible 90-minute set of sensitive artistry, powerhouse virtuosity, and relentless energy.

Drawing on jazz, rock, funk, and Latin influences, Snarky Puppy played numbers from the group’s latest Grammy-award winning album, Culcha Vulcha. The music was complex, but not so cerebral that anyone felt left out. There were no lyrics, yet everyone could sing along. People freaked out when percussionist Nate Werth exchanged his drumsticks for shakers in the middle of his solo. By the end, dozens of people were dancing in the aisles. Moments like these were plentiful over the course of the entire evening, which demonstrated the sense of connection that Snarky Puppy was able to create with the audience.

The group achieved an amazing balance between carefully rehearsed tightness of sound and improvisatory freedom that kept everyone on the edge of their seats. Every heart-stopping break, every jaw-dropping solo, every head-bopping groove and catchy melody kept the venue full of energy. Since every instrument was hooked up to amplifiers, the players were able to use distortion and reverb techniques to widen and exploit the timbral possibilities of their instruments. And the audience couldn’t seem to get enough of the delicious sounds they cooked up.

This concert was one of the most enjoyable performances I’ve attended in a long time. I’ve been to dozens of great concerts in my life, and dozens more after moving to Ann Arbor, but something about this show was special. Both Mama Sol and Snarky Puppy achieved an intimate connection with the crowd, despite its large size. Their grooves were electrifying, which created this beautiful, symbiotic relationship between audience and performer as energy whirred around the 3,000-seat auditorium. Afterwards, I couldn’t believe that I had been crammed into a Hill Auditorium seat for three hours. The music was so infectiously joyful that perhaps time itself got a little lost in the moment.

I’ve been Google-Searching Beauty and the Beast on a regular basis for about four months now, and if the conversation among my friends is anything to go by, I haven’t been alone. Judging by the trailer, Disney has pulled out all the stops this time with special effects, an all-star cast, the company’s first openly gay character, and classic musical numbers redone by the likes of John Legend and Ariana Grande. Everyone knows the story of Belle – the smart, ambitious girl who sings about leaving her provincial town, who sacrifices herself to save her father, who learns to see past the Beast’s rough exterior. But that won’t stop any of us from wanting to see it again on the big screen.

And of course, it doesn’t hurt that I’m automatically down for anything that even remotely involves Emma Watson.

The movie will be showing in theaters nationwide (including the RAVE in Ann Arbor), starting this Friday, March 17^th.