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(04/28/13 6:49pm)
Pitchforks: 3.5/5Rated: RReleased: April 26, 2012In "Arthur Newman" a film directed by Dante Ariola, the camera briefly focuses on a poem halfway through the movie that reads, “For fear you’ll be alone / You do many things / You wouldn’t do at all.” Despite its brevity, this poem contains the movie’s central themes: identity and a dichotomy between fear and love.
"Arthur Newman’s" protagonist Arthur Newman (Colin Firth) was once an estranged family man named Wallace Avery. The movie offers only several minutes on Wallace’s life; he almost immediately acquires a passport belonging to a dead man named Arthur Newman. The dealer, as he hands Wallace his new identity, emphasizes that Arthur Newman was “a real human being.”
Apart from this immediate identity change, all the audience knows about Wallace pertains to his tendency to park outside his ex-wife’s house to pull out some binoculars to spy on his former family, which includes his alienated son Kevin (Lucas Hedges).
Wallace heads to a state park outside his home town Orlando, Fla., where he fakes his death along the Atlantic shoreline. Now as Arthur Newman, he travels alone until he meets the medicine-downing kleptomaniac Mikaela “Mike” (Emily Blunt). Whether Arthur retains some nice-guy nature or wants to join the disorderly lifestyle, he tends to the bed-ridden Mike until she recovers from a cough syrup overdose. The two eventually travel together and the audience learns that Mike, too, lives under a fake identity.
With insufficient back stories behind both characters, their identities can never be fully distinguished from their former selves. For instance, a scene halfway through the movie shows Arthur and Mike spying on an elderly couple through binoculars in a car. Arthur continues the same voyeurism he embraced as Wallace. However, this one isolated incident stands out because binoculars were shown in the Wallace segment; all other behavior requires mere guesswork as to its origin in identity.
To make matters more complicated, Arthur and Mike develop a love affair but with a catch; they do not fall in love as Arthur and Mike but as role-playing couples in various homes. The movie juggles with permanent and temporary identities so frequently that any insight the movie provides on identity quickly becomes frustrating in its obscure questions and multidimensional answers that do not properly address the answers the film brings up.
We gather that Arthur’s identity change came from humiliation as a golfer who missed a simple put shot and from his love toward his family. At one point, Arthur says, “Family just crushes your heart, doesn’t it?”
The film includes subtle elements that enhance the trouble in understanding identity. Most scenes when Arthur or Mike face identity crises take place near a reflective water surface. One particular scene at a swimming pool shows two ducks in the water – one white, one black. As Arthur and Mike discuss identity the white duck passes under a shadow until it, too, looks black.
Overall, "Arthur Newman" will reward the patient viewers content with leaving the theater with more questions than answers. The film explores identity, but it does not draw any conclusions. Going back to the poem, the relationships in the movie do more to form identity than the conscious effort to do so; perhaps the muddled messages suggest identity as a core that cannot be changed.
The characters are likable, and the character development arcs efficiently. But the frustratingly conflicting messages that make these characters unknowable eventually wears the movie thin.Reach the reporter at jconigli@asu.edu
(04/12/13 4:00am)
Pitchforks: 2/5
(04/08/13 11:45pm)
As the semester draws to a close, several art students are displaying their work to the ASU community for free, some of which are exhibitions as a final result of their thesis projects.
In the Harry Wood Gallery from April 8 through April 12, graduate painting student Benjamin Willis shows his “SIZE matters” collection. This Master of Fine Art Thesis exhibition in painting follows Willis’s personal journey; he has painted those who shaped his experience in the M.F.A. program at ASU.
“Each painting features an individual, their artwork and varies in size depending upon their authority in his academic/social cosmos,” Willis said in an email.
These portraits must be experienced; the light, shadows and colors craft memorable faces, while some hidden figures lurk in the pictures’ backgrounds.
Graduate sculpture student Christina You-sun Park’s exhibition — called “Between the Fragments” — investigates the “understood yet nonsensical coded languages spoken by immigrant families in the United States,” as explained on the gallery’s website.
You-sun Park’s art incorporates alphabetic structures tangled together while interacting with objects, such as stone sledges and wood shards. The exhibition itself turns the Night Gallery in the Tempe Marketplace into a long airplane corridor filled with language imagery.
Arrows point every direction in the Night Gallery. Graduate metals student Leon Nash also presents his work called “WAY,” which represents movement and directionality.
One piece, for example, has more than 60 white arrows emerging through a wooden plank, but several misplaced arrows face different directions in what suggests conflict. Nash’s art promises to appease the philosophically inclined with its suggestions on time and transience, but his art appeals to all people through its approach to setting goals in time and forgetting to live in the present.
If sitting down with a cup of coffee inside a gallery sounds enjoyable, graduate printmaking student Caroline Battle’s “You May Also Like...” series invites you to relax, sip java and observe the objects we overlook. Battle creates her pieces using material considered waste, such as junk mail, receipts and old furniture. In the Step Gallery near Mill, “You May Also Like...” reveals, quite literally, what one has “at their disposal to be happy.”
To conclude the list, the exhibit “de • liberate” features art from nine Bachelor of Fine Arts candidates — talent emerging from painting, ceramics and metals. Like all other exhibits listed here, “de • liberate” costs nothing — for free the public can head to Gallery 100 on the Tempe Campus to experience this gathering of artists and their interpretations of the world.
Reach the reporter at jconigli@asu.edu
(03/05/13 5:00am)
Pitchforks: 4.5/5
(02/21/13 8:00pm)
On the southwest corner at the intersection between Southern Avenue and Rural Road, tall silver letters face the road, spelling “MUSEUM.” These letters belong to the Tempe History Museum, a community establishment dedicated to Tempe’s history.
This Thursday for free at the museum, Nancy Hormann, executive director for Downtown Tempe Community, will be speaking about a topic especially relevant to ASU students: the future of Mill Avenue. Her lecture will cover art on Mill, music and architecture plans.
On the museum’s website, a video explaining the museum's mission and vision features Dan Miller, the exhibits coordinator, who explains its value.
“The Tempe History Museum is a community history museum, and what that means is we tell the stories of the people within this community," he said. "And it’s a pretty exciting community. It always has been.”
From the Hohokam who built canals and made Tempe into a more livable area, to the modern, mixed culture, Miller stresses Tempe’s diversity.
“Tempe is a cool place to live; it’s got a little bit of different personality, and I think a lot of that is the people from around the world that end up living here," he said. "The diversity ends up being reflected right in our museum."
Admission is free. To make a visit more compelling, the Museum hosts special events, such as “Third Thursdays at the Museum.”
As the name suggests, every third Thursday of the month, a guest lecturer is brought in to the museum to discuss Tempe’s past, present and future. Last month, for instance, Christine Wilkinson from ASU spoke about investing in future leaders and solutions, while Greg Esser from ASU spoke about the future of art events back in November."The museum staff thought this series would be a good way to get at that ‘imagine the future’ aspect in the museum’s vision statement," Miller said in an email.
This approach for the future brings Hormann from the Downtown Tempe Community to the museum this Thursday. Her lecture will provide insight on the local arts and businesses around Mill Avenue. Reach the reporter at jconigli@asu.edu
(02/14/13 3:00am)
On Tuesday, a student walking past Neeb Hall around 3:45 p.m. was overheard talking on the phone, saying, “There are so many happy people out today” before getting lost in a crowd.
(02/03/13 5:36pm)
Dark and strange, the uncanny is gradually revealing itself during our digital age. We especially observe the uncanny in cinema — not in the psychotic cat horror flick from the ‘70s aptly named “The Uncanny” (a laughable premise, albeit a satisfying trailer), but rather in animated films such as “The Polar Express” and Pixar’s short film “Tin Toy.”
(01/22/13 3:00am)
(01/18/13 12:00pm)
Benshi, traditional narrative storytellers who accompany silent films, provide verbal components for audiences to further understand emotion in early movies. This Friday at 2 p.m. on the Tempe campus in Neeb Hall 105, Kataoka Ichiro, a Benshi, will perform to the Japanese silent film directed by Yasujiro Ozu, "I Was Born, But..."
(01/10/13 12:30am)
The new year calls for students to explore the artistic opportunities available in Tempe. For monthly events to attend, the Arizona Wind Symphony is worth checking out.
(12/05/12 11:48pm)
Jazz music feels fitting in Tommy V’s Urban Kitchen and Bar in Old Town Scottsdale.
(11/25/12 10:18pm)
The video game community has finally received its newest gaming console: Nintendo’s Wii U. Released last week, the successor to the Wii has been anticipated with both skepticism and enthusiasm since it was first announced at the E3 conference in June 2011. Now that it has finally been released, it has been met with similarly mixed feelings.
(11/19/12 11:29pm)
Label: 19 Recordings Inc.
(11/16/12 3:09am)
With Veterans Day just passing, and Saturday’s ASU football game taking a Salute to Service theme for U.S. troops, it is fitting that an art exhibition is currently on display on campus, promoting respect for those in the armed forces.
(11/06/12 1:44am)
Those versed in Moorish proverbs understand that “he who does not travel does not know the value of men.” People study abroad in France to understand the need for art, in China to unravel the significance in tradition, in Costa Rica to explore humankind’s place in natural paradise. Traveling is viewed as a physical departure from one locale to another in order to learn about the human experience, but the truth is that the benefits gained in traveling are only purely mental.
(10/31/12 10:55pm)
Some people like to use stereotypes to predict the audience at different concerts.
(10/16/12 10:46pm)
Album: Former Lives
(10/10/12 10:32pm)
Halloween is quickly approaching and it’s officially horror movie season. There have been several recent releases like “House at the End of the Street” and “The Possession.” Neither movie was well-received by critics, and based on an increasing supply of subpar horror movies over the past several years, the genre must be scrutinized for the purpose of improvement in order to make future Halloweens sufficiently frightful.
(10/05/12 12:16am)
Concerning instruments, there exists a double bass so massive that playing it requires a platform and a lever system. It dwarfs even the 10-foot-tall man. There are some mechanical instruments that play themselves, with automated programs coordinating snappy drumbeats and fluid keyboard strokes. There are instruments with prestige, such as John Lennon’s Steinway piano that he used to compose his masterpiece “Imagine.” Then, of course, there are the thousands of diverse instruments found in different world regions.
(09/30/12 9:02pm)
Equipped with patented folk charm, The Lumineers swept ASU students off their feet by filling the Marquee Theatre with sonic warmth on Sept. 28 night. However, the last song of the night was neither a Lumineers song nor an encore performed by the band alone; the group welcomed the opening band, Bad Weather California, back on stage to close the night with a collaborated cover of “The Weight” by The Band.