arts
18
Friday, February 2, 2007
Jam: Music trumps snowboard skills continued from cover
The openers played to a crowd of 20 or so people scattered across the front of the stage. It’s a known rule that while the opening bands are on, the crowd is supposed to remain scattered, since you don’t want to give them the impression that you actually like their music, in case you really don’t. There’s no room for that at an outdoor concert. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until the urging of Idle Sons lead Mike Eastick (by then the crowd had grown to about 100) that everyone decided to pack tighter and move right up to the stage. The 20-minute slots between sets were apt times for the crowd to raise their body temperatures inside Fed Hall. Various booths treated the crowd to band merch, sponsor brochures, pizza and cotton candy. The bar was set up to serve hot chocolate in crude little paper cups, which turned out to be fairly popular. And then they had the ski competition. I didn’t much care for it. Neither did the rest of the crowd, it seemed. The organizers seemed to be working on a “if you build a ski hill, the masses will come” type attitude — it didn’t quite turn out that way. Without set demonstration times, the skiers and snowboarders took the slope when they felt like it — either when a band was on or during the down-time. At either point, they didn’t get much attention. When Idle Sons took to the stage, they were sporting a new lead guitarist, who was apt at making weird faces as he played and fitting in with the band musically — pretty awesome considering he’d been with them for a week.
They started off with the harder, headthrashing tunes and moved onto the more melodic but still rock-laced songs. Having seen Thornley, the main act, before in Toronto and being adequately impressed, I wasn’t expecting much. I was initially turned off, with lead singer Ian Thornley sounding hoarse and off-tune. He slowly started hitting the notes a couple minutes into the set and then decided to blow me away. With their hard thrashing guitar riffs and worn but still slick vocals, Thornley treated the crowd to songs off their debut album, as well as unreleased tracks and “That Song” by Thornley’s predecessor Big Wreck. Their own raucous-rendition of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall Part II” followed, as well as a seamless integration of U2’s “Sunday, Bloody, Sunday” into the bridge of “Come Again.” Ian Thornley took tuning downtimes as a chance to break into comedic routines and impromptu guitar solos ranging from blues to accidental riffs that he decided would do well in future albums. Feds, being much like the 55-year old aunt you never want to visit because the only toys she has are made of China, decided to disband the mosh pit that broke out during Thornley’s set. Way to take the fun out of rock, Feds. In a not so surprising move, Feds also chose to move the much “anticipated” 19+ after party to Bomber, with no given reason — slowly furthering very painful demise of Fed Hall. All-in-all, Polar Jam was a ball. The stellar line-up ensured that our socks were rocked off several times and more. Cold, sure, but that added novelty made it an extra special, albeit painful, experience. mjangda@imprint.uwaterloo.ca
Feds, being much like the 55-year old aunt you never want to visit because the only toys she has are made of china, decided to disband the1/29/07 mosh pit broke imprint-shebops 2:58that PM Page 1 out during Thornley’s set.
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“You’re part of the family”
w w w . c e n t r e - s q u a r e . c o m
Smokin’ Aces Joe Carnahan
Epic Movie Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer
Universal Pictures
New Regency Pictures
First thing’s first: you have to walk into this movie accepting that you are about to step into a guys’ movie — full of blood, scantily dressed hookers, lesbian women who, to quote Jason Lee, just want “some deep dicking” and some other crazy shit. I was definitely the only girl, besides the friend I went with, in the theatre who was not on a date. I actually overheard one guy telling his friends that he had tricked his girlfriend into coming to this movie by telling her it was Notebookesque; she is a fucking moron. Smokin’ Aces focuses in on Buddy “Aces” Israel (Jeremy Piven), a Vegas magician who has been “Sinatra”-ing it with the mob, who have subsequently decided to put a milliondollar hit out on him. This causes five separate groups of assassins to go on a search for Israel to claim the reward. Donald Curruthers (Ray Liotta) and Richard Messner (Ryan Reynolds) of the FBI are also sent out to protect Israel. The assassins and FBI are all trying to get to Israel first, resulting in, the predictable, bloodshed. This is not to say that there aren’t some plot twists, some that even I didn’t see coming. All I have to say is pay attention to the dialogue. The choice of actors was superb. Nobody does sleaze quite like Piven, whose regular stint as an entertainment agent, Ari Gold, on Entourage. In Smokin’ Aces Piven does not disappoint. He is the classic Vegas showman, sporting purple velour suits and smoking jackets paired with matching slippers and a cocainepowdered nose. It is also my personal belief that a movie that involves the mob must either have Al Pacino or Ray Liotta in it; luckily Smokin’ Aces has the latter. In this movie, Liotta is working as a Fed but his mob-like antics and gunplay still shine through. One particular scene finds Liotta trapped in an elevator with one of the many assassins, which results in a gunfight to end all gunfights. Remember Ben Affleck back when he played small parts? Well, Smokin’ Aces brings back this classic Ben. His character may not be present for very long, but his Boston accented assassin makes for a compelling additon to the film. But, in every cast there is someone not up to par. In this case it was Alicia Keys who, like many other singers turned actresses, cannot act and has no emotional range. She has very dead eyes that convey no emotion at all, when she is shot at she kind of looks like she is going to fall asleep. Her mumbled chatter, along with her glazed eyes lead me to rather “stony” conclusions as an explanation for her low quality portrayal. To be honest, I went to this movie for the violence that is typical to this genre. I must say that at some points I was craving more violence, more blood. And then a guy sat on a chainsaw.
I was a big fan of Not Another Teen Movie and the first few Scary Movie installments. I see merit in the shameless spoof genre, but there is no such merit in Epic Movie. The genres those movies mock are rife with clichés to be exploited. I can see why someone would think that the epic genre would, considering how well it worked for horror and coming-of-age and the sheer quantity of epic clichés. The problem is that epic spoof already comes from another source — try, maybe, all other mainstream comedy. Epic movies are the blockbusters, the films that do very well, and are subsequently mocked relentlessly because everybody knows about it. How many times have comedys spoofed the famous “freedom” speech from Braveheart? How many Hamlet spoofs are out there? To their credit, Epic Movie avoided the old jokes, but consequently had an incredibly short memory and resorted to spoofing movies that weren’t epic by any definition — I’m sorry, Borat and Nacho Libre don’t cut it. The makers of Epic Movie know less about the epic genre than they do about spoofs — it’s like they gave a 15-year-old kid a pile of new releases and a bag of pot for the weekend and told him told him to write the script. Epic Movie started at the Da Vinci Code, went through X-Men and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory then the characters go through a wardrobe into the land of Gnarnia (guess what they’re spoofing). It didn’t go anywhere from there, leaving plenty of time for bad joke after bad joke, including when the various characters make cheesy references to their other movies. It was funny when Kevin Smith did it when in Mallrats, but that’s the kind of joke that can only be made once. Epic Movie makes the joke at least three times in an hour and a half. How many times do I have to tell you people, if I wanted to watch masturbation, I would’ve rented porn. Spoof films succeed by having lame jokes that cover an immense scope of film. Epic Movie fails because it doesn’t make nearly enough allusions — heck, they don’t even spoof Lord of the Rings! The cast was good, considering the theme. Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar go to White Castle starred as Edward, one of the four characters the loose plot follows. He might have a good career ahead of him if he can just dodge the next Van Wilder sequels. Jayma Mays, whom you might remember as the cute waitress with incredible recall on the TV show Heroes, performed well as the ditzy Lucy, but there isn’t a whole lot you can do with a script so vapid. Notable cameos included appearances by Kids in the Hall’s Kevin McDonald, Darrell Hammond of Saturday Night Live, and of course, the obligatory appearance by Carmen Electra. Epic Movie is a spoof that doesn’t spoof. Don’t go. You won’t laugh, even if you laughed at Scary Movie whatever-they’re-up-to-now. If only there was some catchy line I could use to go out on a high note. Something making some connection between the title and degree to which the movie sucked. Nothing springs to mind. Oh well, just go see Smokin’ Aces, I hear it’s pretty good.
— Emma Tarswell
— Darren Hutz