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Arts

The Setonian
Arts

Rebecca Goldberg | Abroadway

October 1

There are some places on this earth that seem to laugh in the face of natural order. Studio lots are among them.     The size of a small city in their own right, they exist only for the creation of movies and television, housing dozens of fake apartments, half-bars and partial street corners. Besides the modest looking offices, studio lots seem to frown on streets with buildings and rooms with four walls.     On the day I arrived in L.A., sometime between being picked up at the airport and accidentally finding my apartment complex by myself in my new rental car, my family friend Janet thought it would be a good idea to take me to the 20th Century Fox lot, where "How I Met Your Mother" is shot. She thought that it would be nice to show me where I would be going before my first day. Perhaps she also thought that it would keep me from freaking out around other people (and embarrassing her) upon first seeing the set for MacLaren's Pub, the show's version of Central Park.     "HIMYM" (pronounced "him-yim" by both my friends and the show's creators) shoots on Stage 22. The building is located somewhere between the giant Julie Andrews poster and the Star Wars mural (when the massive warehouse door slides open, the terrible likeness of Mark Hamill is decapitated). The soundstage itself isn't quite as grand as I'd been taught to imagine by behind-the-scenes featurettes for big-budget movies (this is a four-camera sitcom, after all), but it's indeed a large, tall space. And the sets look smaller in person, although I suppose I was expecting that.     The weirdness didn't really hit me until I almost stumbled onto the set for Ted's tiny kitchen. Though large sheets cover the furniture pieces for the other rooms on non-shooting days, the kitchen remains intact, down to the tchotchkes on the fridge. This is where Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan) consummate their engagement in the pilot, where Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin (Cobie Smulders) make crêpes in "Slap Bet," where Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) wimps out of telling Robin he loves her in "Benefits," where ... I'm sorry. I just nerded out for a second.     The point is that the phrase "breaking the fourth wall" is more literal than I ever realized. In fact, I'm still uncomfortable walking onto the sets when I cut through the stage. When I step from the concrete aisle way onto the fake wood flooring, I keep expecting someone to tell me to get off or stop soiling it because I don't belong.     It's the darndest thing, though — no one ever does. Somehow, I've been granted the privilege of stepping through the invisible fourth wall and examining the things about the construction of the show that are both more fake and more real than they look.     (One of the funniest gags on "HIMYM" is the never-ending stream of jokes about Canada at Robin's expense. On set last week, Cobie Smulders, who's also Canadian, corrected Jason Segel's pronunciation of "gouda," and he rejoined, "What, is that what they call it in Canada?" She shot back, "No, in Holland, where it's from, douche.")     At the end of my second day in the office, I decided to cut through the empty stage to get to the parking garage. And I couldn't resist: I stopped at the gang's signature booth at MacLaren's, which is positioned right in the front, where the fourth wall of the room should be. As I sat, my heart raced. I couldn't believe where I was.     Then I heard the security guard call, "Is anyone in here?" and, in a panic, I rushed out, back to real life.

The Setonian
Arts

Modern Family' conquers comedy lineup with funny script and interesting cast

September 30

After canceling two-thirds of their Wednesday night lineup ("Pushing Daisies" and "Dirty Sexy Money" ) and moving "Private Practice" in order to powerhouse Thursdays, ABC made a risky move this season: launching five new shows on Wednesdays, four of them comedies. So far, though, it looks like the network will at least find success with "Modern Family," one of the funniest new shows on television.

The Setonian
Arts

Top Ten | People Who Should Host SNL

September 30

Megan Fox, the robot she is, did a shabby job hosting the premiere of SNL this week. We can guarantee the following individuals would have topped her performance:  10. Garfield: He's lazy, fat and orange. What could be funnier than a totally apathetic animal host? Sure, Odie might be cuter, but Garfield would hopefully hit on Kristen Wiig.  9. Judd Apatow: The man behind many recent, smash-hit comedies is often heard from, but rarely seen. Let's get Mr. Apatow in front of the camera for once and see what kind of chops he has.  8. Zombie Michael Jackson: Too soon? We think not.  7. ET: Those buggy eyes! That long, wormy neck! Who wouldn't love to see an adorable alien conduct skits in broken English?  6. The Tisch Library Voice: "Attention, attention please. I will not shut up for the next 30 minutes."  5. Robert Pattinson: No one's asking him to be funny ... or even act. All Rob has to do is stand on set and he'll have girls in the audience swooning and screaming for him.  4. Dick Cheney: The heart attack and accidentally-shooting-people-while-hunting jokes alone would keep us entertained for hours. We are, however, a little scared that he'd come after us if we laughed at him.  3. Julia Child: Meryl Streep as Julia Child would also do. Just so long as that high-pitched voice and towering figure take the stage.  2. Joel McHale: With a hilarious new TV show this season ("Community"), this host of "The Soup" has proven he's got staying power. McHale is practically satire royalty, and a one-night reign on SNL is long overdue.  1. Alec Bladwin: Even though this "30 Rock" star has hosted before, we love him too much to give up hope that he'll host again. Baldwin's versatility and ability to keep a dead-pan expression are much needed traits in any SNL guest star these days. We're looking at you, Jimmy Fallon.

The Setonian
Arts

Classical inspires contemporary at the Gardner Museum's special exhibition

September 30

Seeing contemporary art in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, renowned for its collection of Italian Renaissance paintings, may surprise visitors. Indeed, the special exhibition "Su-Mei Tse: Floating Memories" is jarring at first, as it contrasts so sharply with the rest of the museum's collection.

The Setonian
Arts

Meet your Monday night entertainment for the Fall

September 29

From the get-go, "How I Met Your Mother" — or "HIMYM" ("him-yim"), as it's affectionately called by fans — didn't seem like it would be able to last more than a few episodes. Despite its thin plot device (a man tells his children the story of how he met their mother), the show has gained a sizeable viewership since its premiere in 2005. Now, as it returns for its fifth season, "HIMYM" is back to all of its old tricks.

The Setonian
Arts

Surrogates' deserves a replacement

September 29

Let's try a simple exercise: Rack your brain and try to remember watching "The Matrix" (1999) and "I, Robot" (2004). Now, slowly strip away all the riveting and aesthetic scenes of these two films and voila! You have basically seen Bruce Willis' latest film, "Surrogates."

The Setonian
Arts

Phans, rejoice! Phish returns with 'Joy'ful LP

September 29

Phish has played sold-out arenas and festivals for the better part of two decades, amassing legions of adoring fans who call their best live performances "miracles." After four years apart, the Vermont foursome is happier than ever to be playing its transformative music again.

The Setonian
Arts

Fame' deserves no celebrity

September 28

When Christopher Gore's "Fame" premiered in 1980, it garnered massive critical acclaim, winning two Oscars for its depiction of the cutthroat world of young students in the performing arts. Almost 30 years later, the movie industry has decided that it is time to take advantage of dancing reality shows such as "So You Think You Can Dance" (2005), and has updated "Fame" for a modern audience. Where the old "Fame" pushed the boundaries by exploring the darker side of life as an artist, the new remake sweetens that world up until it's a giant ball of cotton candy — candied fluff with little substance that gets boring after the first couple of bites.

The Setonian
Arts

Serious but subtle, 'Still Walking' has legs

September 27

Every fall, when the heyday of the summer blockbuster is over, theaters are flooded with "serious" films. From historical epics to quirky indie dramedies, it is difficult to separate films of genuine quality from shallow prestige pieces. It is even more unfortunate that most moviegoers will probably overlook a mini-masterpiece like "Still Walking" (2008) because of its apparent lack of excitement and drama.

The Setonian
Arts

Parks and Recreation' finds its footing in new season

September 27

Last season NBC premiered a new comedy. It had a solid pedigree and high expectations, but in its short, six-episode first season, it had trouble settling into a groove. Luckily, NBC executives didn't lose hope; they renewed it for a second season, giving the producers a chance to prove that the show was going somewhere.

The Setonian
Arts

A Fine Frenzy still stuck in the 'Birdcage'

September 27

Alison Sudol, lead singer of A Fine Frenzy, deserves some credit for her band's second album, "Bomb in a Birdcage" (2009), but she doesn't deserve much. At 24, Sudol is the founder and musical powerhouse behind A Fine Frenzy. Her band has released two albums in the last two years, but that's not impressive enough to get listeners to overlook the fact that she's still thinking inside the box.

The Setonian
Arts

Vida y Drama' takes a lively look at Mexico

September 24

    They had a constitution, but, of course, not consensus. The Mexican Revolution was sputtering out, the occasional last peal of war still shaking the run-down walls of buildings across the country. A small collective of artists saw an opportunity — many opportunities, really: coat these walls, enliven a nation of stagnated artistic thought and sustain progressive social fervor as the revolution faded.     The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston's (MFA) new exhibition, "Vida y Drama: Modern Mexican Prints," explores the politics of early 20th century Mexico through the lens of various artists and genres and is roughly organized into three parts: prints in the artistic tradition of muralism, politicized posters produced in the wake of World War II and portraiture. The exhibition departs from its artists' most well-known medium, murals, but the immediate necessity that comes peeling off the wall in their biggest works shows up with equal potency in these prints.     The exhibit opens with a collection of prints made in the aftermath of the Mexican revolution by artists including "los tres grandes," or "the big three" muralists — Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Through varying stylistic modes, each artist comments on the state of Mexico in the wake of political upheaval.     One work in the exhibition, Rivera's "Open Air School" (1932), tackles the social challenge of widespread illiteracy that Mexico faced with an image of hope. In the print, Rivera depicts a group of women gathered around in a field, reading from a book.     He renders them in soft, muted grays and in a style influenced by the indigenous roots of rural Mexico. The image expresses the need to improve literacy, but does so without words, and Rivera draws the viewer's attention to the didactic function of visual imagery and its power to transcend language.     Orozco's images, on the other hand, express the steep human toll paid in war. Orozco's "Rear Guard" (1929) illustrates a group of "soldaderas" -— women of the revolution who traveled in support of and often fought alongside the men. The rounded shoulders of the figures' dark forms appear tired and worn as the group treks through the countryside. Orozco employs darkly saturated ink and sharp contrast to heighten the gravity of the scene. The hats of the countless figures tip downward at the angle of their heads, perhaps in grief for those who were lost or in sheer exhaustion. The rifles slung across their backs seem to pierce the grey sky above them, echoing the violence of the war. For all their wearied vitality, the figures are all faceless, not representing a particular group or family but rather all of those affected by the war.     Other images of note are Rivera's "Zapata" (1932), which the MFA declares the most famous Mexican print, and Orozco's "The Masses" (1935). The exhibit's title image, Alberto Beltrán's "Vida y Drama de México" (1957), is a preparatory drawing for a poster that advertised a collection of prints made by a workshop of artists in response to Mexico's political and economic failures of the time.     The exhibit includes both the sketch for the poster and the poster itself, which depicts a pair of artist's hands in the process of making a print. One notable revision that Beltrán made in the final image is the placement of the hands. In the original drawing, the hands appear to project from the depth of the picture space, as though the viewer is facing the person to whom they belong. But in the final poster, the hands have been repositioned as though they belong to the viewer herself. This imagery forces the person in front of it to participate in the poster, and calls for the viewer to become involved in the political message of the exhibit.     "Vida y Drama" is inherently international, as the images are in dialogue with global politics and artistic movements. Portraits by American photographer Edward Weston are sprinkled in with the exhibition's other works. Weston's portrait of Orozco depicts the artist in close proximity and casts a focus on his illuminated, round glasses. Weston was interested in photographing everyday sights so as to highlight their essential geometric forms and reduce them to pure shapes, and in doing so, Weston compels the viewer to observe the surrounding world in a new way.     These photographs also provide a link to the neighboring exhibit, "Viva Mexico! Edward Weston and His Contemporaries," located in the Herb Ritts Gallery, which nicely complements "Vida y Drama."  

The Setonian
Arts

Rebecca Goldberg | Abroadway

September 24

During my sophomore spring at Tufts, there was one question on everyone's lips: "Are you going abroad?" My best friends were on their way to exotic places like Chile, Egypt and Australia; they had chores like visa paperwork and updating their passports. I just sat and watched them all freak out.     "Am I going abroad?" I said. "No. Well, kind of. I'm going to L.A."     Because I want to sit around in the sun on the beach all day? Because I'm hoping to get a glimpse of my favorite celebrities? Because I'm lazy and all of that leaving-the-country paperwork looked pretty daunting?     No, not quite.     See, I want to work in TV. I want to go to meetings and give script notes and hear pitches and then be mean about them later. I want to have a hand in deciding what everyone else will watch. But I go to Tufts, where discussion of the impact of the media is analytical and theoretical. Here in L.A., everything is so very real. I could touch it ... if I weren't just a lowly intern.     As an abroad experience, it's kind of a cop-out. I was born here and didn't move east until I was five. But Los Angeles as I'm experiencing it now feels totally different from my first home. And my experiences and impressions here could determine the course of my life — both in terms of my career and my home — after graduation.     So I'm taking a few Hollywood career-focused classes through Boston University and then working almost full-time during the day at two different internships. One of them is in a department I very well may want to work in one day: comedy development at 20th Century Fox Television. It seems like a boring office, but in the half-hour I was there for my interview, I saw framed photos of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997) on the walls and heard an upcoming episode of the brand-new show "Glee" blasting from an office. The potent air of the real center of the television world gave me a little shiver of excitement. I'm that kind of nerd.     My other job is one part education, one part for fun, and three parts dream-come-true: I'm the only intern for one of my favorite TV shows, CBS' "How I Met Your Mother." Like everyone working in this town, I got the job because I knew somebody on the show already. But it's easy to shrug off the guilt brought on by nepotism when you're sitting at a desk with the clear view of the robot prop from your favorite episode. And then, when someone asks you to go down to set to ask the director what she wants for lunch ("And the actors, too, but only if they approach you first!"), that guilt is all but forgotten.     Everything about that job — even the downtime at my desk, frantically reloading Facebook and Google reader so I can find something to read — is either surreal or sublime, and it's usually both at once. And doesn't that, in a way, make it a microcosm of L.A.? A place where so many things that seem real turn out not to be. A place where the highest reverence is reserved for actors and writers. A place where hard work is balanced by fun.     Ah, but now I'm profiling the city. Are the things everyone knows about L.A. actually true? The beautiful people, the stars, the superficiality? I don't know; I've only been here three weeks. I guess that's what the rest of this semester is for.     As they say in the movies: Bring it on.

The Setonian
Arts

The Informant!' knows the secret to comedy

September 24

    There's nothing inherently funny about corporate scandal and price fixing in agribusiness. That's why Steven Soderbergh has to pull out all the stops to craft a side-splitting comedy from some fairly dry, raw material     Soderbergh is already popular among audiences for crowd favorites like "Ocean's Eleven" (2001), "Ocean's Twelve" (2004) and "Ocean's Thirteen" (2007), and his film on the seedy underbelly of the corporate world, "Erin Brockovich" (2000). Confidence in the director, combined with the magnetism of a fat Matt Damon with a mustache, makes "The Informant!" enticingly attractive.     The film is billed as a comedy, but its method — a super-slow version of comedic timing — means that the film doesn't hit its stride until halfway through. At an easy one-hour and 45 minutes, though, that's forgivable.     Mark Whitacre (played by Matt Damon) is a high-level executive at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), an enormous Midwestern corporation dealing in corn byproducts. But all is not as it seems, as ADM is secretly involved in a multi-national price-fixing scheme with its competitors, and Whitacre is in the perfect position to reveal the scam. He becomes an informant, agreeing to cooperate with the FBI and wear a wire to work.     Whitacre takes everyone for a ride, as it turns out he might not be the best man for the FBI's inside job. The movie's pace quickens, and Whitacre, the FBI and the audience all find themselves in a quagmire of absurdity. Whitacre is a liar and a thief, but it's hard to tell if he's lying about being a thief because Damon plays him with such sincerity.     Damon's performance makes the movie. Anyone else would make the role of Mark Whitacre seem outright villainous. Damon, however, infuses him with a homegrown, boyish charm. Everyone does trust him — ADM, the FBI, his wife Ginger. But here's the crushing realization: maybe they shouldn't.     Soderbergh carefully considers every element of his work, including the score. He did much the same thing with the music in the "Ocean's" series, in which David Holmes' compositions, which played on the hip jazz of the mid '60s, solidified the ambiance of those films. In this case, Marvin Hamlisch's kitschy, tongue-in-cheek score functions similarly.     Mark Whitacre is introduced with his own theme song, a refrain heard throughout the film. It's like an updated version of the "Leave It to Beaver" (1957) theme. The rest of the score is equally schmaltzy. Out of context, it sounds like an episode of "Match Game" (1977). The upbeat, cornball music starkly contrasts with the deathly serious events onscreen, and it heightens the film's sense of absurdity until it's truly funny. For example, Whitacre takes a lie detector test to the tune of a country hoedown. The FBI conducts a raid on white-collar criminals as a 1970s-style talk show theme song plays in the background.     The supporting cast is also pretty funny. Just ask them; they'd probably say so themselves. Soderbergh found a pack of recognizable comedians, dressed them up in suits and called them lawyers, FBI agents, corporate bigwigs and representatives from the Justice Department. Joel McHale, Paul F. Tompkins, Patton Oswalt, Tony Hale and, surprisingly, the Smothers Brothers all make appearances. It's a clever trick, packing the cast with people who are already considered funny. These are faces with histories of hilarity that trigger a kind of, "Hah! That guy!" reaction, complete with a laugh.     There is an overarching theme of incongruity throughout the film that contributes to its humor. This is best exemplified by Mark Whitacre's inner monologue. The movie opens with a voiceover as Whitacre meditates on the implications of corporate food production. Since ADM produces the corn products that show up in everything, "Everyone in this country is a victim of corporate crime by the time they finish breakfast." That's about as relevant as Whitacre's thoughts get. Mostly they're just a stream-of-consciousness rant, unrelated to anything happening onscreen: ideas for TV shows, musings about ties, polar bears and frequent-flier miles. It's an interesting juxtaposition, and instead of distracting and detracting from the film's action, the voiceover complements it.      "The Informant!" is an unusual addition to the world of film comedy because FBI investigations into high-level corporate fraud don't necessarily engender the kind of laugh-out-loud humor that an overt comedy like "The Hangover" (2009) does. The laughs are not served up on that obvious silver platter of pratfalls and poop jokes.     In the end, it is precisely this break with norms of comedy that makes this film so appealing.

The Setonian
Arts

Top Ten | Interrupters

September 23

If Kanye West were to hop on stage to receive an award for Most Notorious Interrupter, we'd grab that mic right out of his hand and scream out the following names. Here's a list of interrupters we'd like to applaud for their ability to butt in.

The Setonian
Arts

Mix of comedic talent converges on NBC's side-splitting 'Community'

September 23

"Community" (2009) is so funny, it almost isn't fair. The commercials for the new NBC comedy were grin-worthy, chuckle-inducing at best. Prior to the pilot, it seemed likely that the show squeezed all of its humor into 30-second spots that ran incessantly for the past few months.

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