Thursday, March 20, 2014
Maryville Daily Forum
Page 9
Entertainment ENTERTAINMENT BRIEFS
Canaan Smith added to Northwest spring concert
STEVE WILKIE
Abigail Breslin & Eleanor Zichy in ‘Haunter.’ A film by Vincenzo Natali. An IFC Films release.
The creators of ‘Haunter’ scared up a creepy film worth watching. Haunter By Gary Darling Staff Writer
It has been quite a long time since I have found a scary film that was worth watching. Time and time again I have found that the horror genre has been lacking in any sort of creativity or quality of story telling. When the chance came to watch the IFC film ‘Haunter’, I really didn’t want to sit down and watch it. I was worried that I would be disappointed, yet again. Then something weird and wonderful happened as I watched this film, it was good. I found myself immersed in the story that was unfolding in front of me.
It was a welcome surprise. Not only was the acting top notch but the story was well written, that isn’t always the case with a scary movie. Besides that, I found myself trying to figure out the clever twist but never could. That is something that doesn’t happen all that often. The story seemed to be hinting one way and would end up going another. Yes, it was truly a surprise to me. Lisa (Abigail Breslin) is a typical teenage girl who is one day short of her sixteenth birthday. Oh, there is one small twist, she is dead and is constantly reliving the day before she turns sixteen. Then, one day, Lisa starts to hear noises that aren’t normal in her every day routine. This scares her but doesn’t stop her from trying to figure out who
or what this could possibly be. What she finds is something that will both shock her and turn her own existence upside down. That is, if she can “survive” what is coming. Overall, I can’t believe how much I did enjoy this film. Now it wasn’t a typical horror film, you don’t see much blood and guts. The real magic here is the mood that the director builds through lighting and misdirection. There is some really well done moments in this film and I loved it. Now this movie wasn’t perfect and it seemed like a weird combination of the movie ‘The Others’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ but it was still ninety minutes well spent. If you are looking for a good nail biter that will keep you guessing, give this one a shot. I found ‘Haunter’ to be a bit of a surprise and you may too.
MARYVILLE, Mo. – Northwest Missouri State University has announced an addition to its spring concert lineup, which now includes country artist Canaan Smith with previously announced artists Gloriana, Jana Kramer and Sarah Darling. Northwest’s annual spring concert is set for Saturday, April 12, at Bearcat Arena. Doors to the venue open at 6:30 p.m. and the show begins at 7:30 p.m. Student tickets are $10 and available at the Student Services Center on the first floor of the Administration Building, beginning at 8 a.m. Monday, Feb. 24. Remaining tickets will be available to the general public for $20, starting at 8 a.m. Monday, March 3. At that time, tickets also will be available for purchase via phone by calling 660.562.1212 or online. Michael Eppley, the Student Activities Council’s director of concert programming, said the student group is pleased to bring what promises to be an energizing show with multiple artists to Bearcat Arena. Due to the length of the show, Eppley said that for the first time SAC also will sell concessions at the arena. “We haven’t had the opportunity to have a country act for a while so this will be a great experience for everyone at Northwest,” Eppley said. “This will be the biggest production that we have put on in years, and I am very proud and excited about the atmosphere it will create on our campus.”
New ‘Star Wars’ to be set 30 years after ‘Jedi’
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The new “Star Wars” has an official timeline and one confirmed returning character: robot R2-D2. Director J.J. Abrams will begin shooting in May on “Star Wars: Episode VII,” which is set three decades after 1983’s “Return of the Jedi,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said Tuesday. Speaking at the company’s annual shareholder’s meeting in Portland, Ore., Iger said the movie would feature “some very familiar faces along with a trio of new, young leads.” Abrams has a penchant for secrecy, and Iger said R2-D2 was the only “official cast member” he would announce. “Episode VII” is set for release in December 2015. Iger also said Pixar plans a third “Cars” movie and a sequel to 2004’s “The Incredibles.”
Coldplay’s Chris Martin to help on ‘The Voice’
NEW YORK (AP) — Coldplay singer Chris Martin is bringing his expertise to NBC’s music competition show “The Voice.” The network said Martin will participate in the “battles” round that begins March 31, advising singers on vocal technique and stage presence. The singers are vying for the attention of their team coaches, who must decide who gets to move on in the show. “The Voice” has established itself this season as the most popular of the music shows, eclipsing the long-running champ “American Idol” on Fox. The guest role is good promotion for Martin and Coldplay, which is releasing a new album in May.
‘Best of best’ of Ansel Adams’ photos on display
NICK UT, AP
This March 14, 2014 photo shows a photo exhibit entitled, “In Focus: Ansel Adams” at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. By JOHN ROGERS AP Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — During the last years of his life, Ansel Adams pored over the tens of thousands of negatives he’d carefully stored since his teens, setting aside 70 he determined would stand as his greatest works of art. Adams offered to personally print, sign and sell sets of 25 photographs from them — but with several strings attached: He would select the first 10 and let buyers choose the other 15. But not just anybody with $30,000 to spend in 1980 could purchase the collection he called “The Museum Set Edition of Fine Prints.” They would only be sold to people Adams judged serious collectors and only after they promised never to resell
them. If they left the buyer’s family, they would have to go to a museum. Among the few dozen who made the cut were the late Leonard and Marjorie Vernon, prominent Southern California collectors whose set was given to the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2011 and is now the centerpiece of “In Focus: Ansel Adams,” which opens Tuesday. Augmented by several other Adams’ photos from the museum’s collection, the exhibition marks the 30th anniversary of the photographer’s death next month. More than that, it provides a fresh look at both Adams’ genius with a camera and in the darkroom. “What sets them off, really,” said Karen Hellman, who curated the exhibit, “is that they were created all within a span of years by Ansel Adams himself, at a time when he
was printing with a particular intensity in mind.” These were the photos the pioneer of art photography considered his best, Hellman continued, and he would take special pains in reproducing them to make sure people knew that. “He spoke about that at the time, how later in life he wanted to create images that were more impactful,” said Hellman, assistant curator in the museum’s Department of Photographs. Although the collection contains several instantly recognizable images, such as “Moon and Half Dome,” photographed in California’s Yosemite National Park in 1960, and “The Tetons and the Snake River” captured in Wyoming in 1942, it’s safe to say even serious students of his work haven’t seen photos quite like these. The difference is likely best displayed in two large prints of arguably Adams’ most famous work, “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.” The museum set photo printed by Adams in 1980 hangs side-by-side with one he printed in 1948. In a brief video clip accompanying the exhibition, Adams describes how he captured the image on a late November afternoon in 1941. He was returning to Santa Fe from a day of fruitlessly searching for subjects to photograph, when he caught a glimpse out of his car window of an “extraordinary” scene of the moon
rising over a cemetery. “I practically ditched the car, and I had some companions with me,” he recalled. “I started yelling, you know, ‘Get me the eight-by-ten, get me the tripod.’” He managed to get off exactly one shot before he lost the light from the setting sun that had been illuminating the crosses marking the cemetery’s graves — and providing the element that made the photo. Although the brilliance of Adams’ work is clearly seen in the 1948 print, it’s displayed in much more intense contrast in the 1980 version: The crosses are brighter, the night sky is darker, the buildings in the background and the landscape in the foreground are sharper. “My parents owned several ‘Moonrises,’ and to put them together and look at the differences from how they changed over time is really fascinating,” said Carol Vernon, who with her husband, Robert Turbin, gave “The Museum Set” to the Getty. Under her parents’ agreement, the photos could have stayed in the family, but she and her husband thought it better for the public to have a chance to see them in an environment where they could be carefully preserved in the future. “Composition was paramount for him and he spent a lot of time before he ever pushed the button and snapped the shutter,” said Vernon, who got to know Adams over the years. “But he also was an incredible technician in the darkroom.”
How he developed those skills is explained in the exhibition, which includes photos ranging from 1921 to 1960. It was in the 1940s that Adams came up with his Zone System, dividing an image into 10 specific zones, ranging from black to white. And it was while photographing “Monolith, The Face of Half Dome,” in 1927 with a camera with a glassslide negative that he said he devised the system for picture-taking called Visualization. “As I replaced the slide, I began to visualize how the print was to appear,” Adams would say later. “I began to see in my mind’s eye the finished product.” That, said Kurt Molnar, a photography instructor who in his early 20s worked in Adams’ gallery and lived in a shack next door to him, was the greatest lesson he imparted — to every art photographer who followed him. “More than anything I learned from Ansel was his ability to take pictures with his eyes and with his mind,” said Molnar, who now teaches photography at Lake Tahoe Community College in California’s Sierra Nevada, where Adams captured so many of his iconic images. “Let’s say you’re standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon,” Molnar continued. “Most people are going to see the entire vista. He could envision, he could see in his mind, the finished product before he even took the picture.”