Life & Art Film Critic

The Upright Citizens Brigade doesn’t care if you think they’re funny. They have enough fans to keep their theater open every night in New York, and enough to give their canceled Comedy Central series cult hit status. The first season of their self-titled show is now out on DVD, and it’s worth picking up for fans of unique, cutting edge improv humor.

The UCB is a comedy troupe along the lines of Monty Python, Kids in the Hall, or Second City. They have their own theater in lower Manhattan, where various performers do improv comedy seven nights a week. The UCB features four members – Matt Besser, Amy Poehler, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh.

They’ve made themselves famous around New York City by pulling various pranks in the streets, such as sending obscene characters to try get interviewed by Al Roker on “The Today Show” and preaching Satanism in city parks.

Poehler’s now a “Saturday Night Live” cast member, where of course she’s become less funny, and Walsh was a correspondent for “The Daily Show” for a while. But they’ve all stayed together as the UCB, a group with writing and ideas so unconventional in style that they’re bound to alienate as many viewers as they delight.

The DVD has 10 episodes and some bonus features, the best of which is a commentary of the “Time Machine” episode done by the UCB with a live audience at their theater. They hang around afterwards to do a Q&A session that gives away more of what they’re really like than any interview could.

The episodes employ an improv technique called “The Harold,” in which several sketches converge at the end of a show into one big finale. The theater performances are likely more outlandish, since their show had to have some mainstream appeal. But even with Comedy Central’s quality lineup of original and inventive shows, “Upright Citizens Brigade” is probably still the weirdest one they’ve ever had, and also one of the brightest.

The shows can’t really be summarized into a certain style or genre. It’s easier to just list some of their ideas. One episode features a child who can’t say anything except, “Shut up,” which his parents try to accept but always end up responding to with violence.

Then there’s Little Donnie, a boy who has a blurred-out horse-sized penis, but doesn’t know it. His teacher calmly explains how the other children were afraid of him and so he gets to be in his own class (the other class at school now has 60 kids in it).

Finally, there’s the lazy Jewish guy who thinks that God told him he can do anything through a hole in a sheet, including smoking, eating pork, celebrating Christmas, eating bread during Passover, and committing murder.

These ideas are great ones, and the four members of the UCB are all definitely funny, but the show falls flat at certain points. Maybe this is just a problem with the first season, which would be expected from a group used to doing live productions. Some of the episodes on the DVD are hilarious, while others have some slow parts.

But they’ve all got enough laughs to make them worth watching, and it’s easy to see why the UCB theater has become so popular with the offbeat New York crowd, especially with $5 tickets on weeknights. Now if only Poehler could save SNL.

Shawn Wines can be reached at shawnwines@aol.com.

Life & Art Secretary

Hello everyone. Just in time to ring in the American holiday spirit of materialism, we have some free stuff to give-a-away. We’re trying to decide what was choice-r, the GTA: Vice City box-set we gave away in September or this John Woo five-DVD box-set. Makes you go hmm…

Woo, who gets cult props for directing such Hong Kong silver-bullet ballets of ultra violence like Hard Boiled, The Killer and the A Better Tomorrow series, crossed-over to the US mainstream with the Travolta post-comeback flicks Broken Arrow and Face/Off.

On December 25, Christmas Day, he has a new action flick hitting theatres, Paycheck, starring Miami-by-association’s Ben Affleck and Kill Bill’s luber hot (literally, figuratively, whatevs) Uma Thurman. It looks like Momento-meets-The Bourne Identity-meets-Ronin-meets-Face/Off: Dude loses memory in the future, runs into shady guy(s), foot chases ensue, probably hooks up with hot girl, car chases ensue, explosions, bullets flying – all that.

If you want this five-DVD box-set to become better acquainted with Woo, answer this question. Select runners-up will receive Paycheck T-shirts (again, a great holiday gift for that love of your life).

Of all of Quentin Tarantino’s flicks (in case you missed Kill Bill’s trailer there are four), which one pays uber-respect to Woo’s legendary men-with-guns standoffs?

Send your answers, one per person, to Huntlaed@hotmail.com. Winners will be contacted by an L&A affiliate, so send that one email and wait. If you get bored play Manhunt for the PS2. If you don’t hear back from us by, let’s say 2007, you didn’t win. Cheers.

Life & Art Editor and the Life & Art clan

MANHUNT
****
Console: PS2
Rated: M for: Mothers are going to be outside picketing your house like the King of Pop’s

And you thought GTA: Vice City was hardcore; well, Manhunt, the newest evil from R* Games is like playing that teeth-to-curb scene in American History X until you are numb inside and need to go cuddle next to a wet-nosed puppy.

Early on, a gang of quasi-Nazi white supremacists hit you with baseball bats until the blot clots bubble through your controller cord like a beer bong in a cartoon, complete with racial slurs spat at your character: a convict named James Cash who is locked in a confused freedom run of violence across desolate landscapes of smoke, fire and murder.

Heavy stuff underneath lots of plastic bag snuffs, Manhunt will keep you gripped tight within the first stages, quickly drowning out those Vice City ’80s radio stations with the suffocating static of soot.

In fact, if this was in theatres instead of at Wal-Mart, there is no way it’d get past the MPAA – but R* deals in games, not celluloid, so even Time magazine will probably offer this warped creation some mucho mainstream props. Ruling the third-person rampage like Id used to claim the first-person shooter, R* displays a near fetish for perfecting graphics and addictive concepts until the entire country is converted.

Splicing a memorable, reoccurring surveillance camera theme into the game play now and again, the sound effects are top notch, and an eerie soundtrack wisps through the polluted air like midnight bullets in Liberty City. And with the objective simply being: fight through hella different gangs, one wonders what exactly R* has up its very affluent, well-tailored sleeve for their heavily awaited update of the 1979 gangland cult flick The Warriors.

And is it not damn time someone lifted the character from the Turbo Grafx gem Splatterhouse? Word. So definitely rent/cop this and then consider getting a pair of scissors and some magazines to make a suitable fan letter of appreciation.

– Hunter Stephenson
Life & Art Editor

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THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE RETURN OF THE KING
***
Console: PS2
Rated: T for Teenagers and Dungeon Masters are no longer going to pursue a higher education

I beat this game in about a week, with the help of my roommate, Rick, aka, Aragorn. We wopped those Orcs’ asses from Rohan to Minas Tirith and back to Mordor, using special moves like Ranger Fury and Orc Bane. Disclaimer: playing this induces shameful nerd-speak.

Any game that is beatable in a week or less by someone who sucks at video games (me) needs some work, not to mention that the evil wizard…wait a second, I mean game (what has happened to me?) has control of the vantage point, so you feel like a fly on the wall inside of a crystal ball sitting in a dead vulture’s hand.

One more gripe before I go hang myself because I just wasted a week of my life referring to myself as Gandolf (the horror!): the final challenge is killing that shriveled half monkey, Smeagol, who btw looks like our women’s basketball coach.

Bowser and that big thing from Contra are real game ending monsters. Smeagol (yes, aka Gollum) is retarded.

– Nate Johnson
Life & Art Writer
Freddie Mercury Human Tribute

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ROGUE OPS
*
Console: Gamecube
Rated: M for Maybe the person who buys my free copy from the pawn shop will use the disc as a Christmas tree ornament.

It is nearly a fact that most video games are not made with girls in mind, for serious, except for that aerobics game for the Power Pad.

Rogue Ops, the latest in the endless line of first-person-run-around-and-violentlessly-kill-the-same-guy-over-and-over games, probably cost a lot to design and produce but it is still the product of some suits saying, “We need to attack this Lara Croft demographic while it’s still fresh!” and therefore, sucks. I was pretty amped to play this game, okay, I wasn’t, but I was amped to get it in the mail: thanks Nintendo – suckers.

For some reason the folks over at BITS Studios decided that the hippest possible concept for a game is to have people play as a blonde supermodel (completely armored and clothed) and, to up the cool factor, they removed the option of jumping.

So, finally when you actually do jump, it is some cinematic slow-mo crap that takes five minutes, something you can only do in one or two spots per stage: utterly stupid.

Aside from climbing onto a balcony like it’s a lunar landing, the game suffers from Capri pants and commentary from Bryant Gumble’s stunt double reading what sounds like narration penned by Wesley Willis (R.I.P. son!).

This game gets a star for being part of my trade-in package to get the new Mario Kart, which rules by the way. We give that game ***1/2. Looky there, two reviews in one – we should start doing that more often.

– Sven Barth
Life & Art Senior Writer
Sven Barth

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MARIO KART: DOUBLE DASH
***1/2
Console: GameCube
Rated: E for Eventually Nintendo is going to give us shares in the company ’cause they give us so much free shiznit

See last two sentences of Rogue Ops review directly above.

– Sven Barth
Life & Art Senior Writer
Sven Barth

Life & Art Writer

There’s something to be said for the spontaneity of sketching. Red Grooms, a seasoned artist from Nashville, could have been like that kid in your class back in high school who would doodle all day and create works of art that could range from comical spoofs of masterpieces to caricature-like scenes of our daily lives.

Not that we’re talking about just a mere sketcher here – far from it. Red Grooms: Selections from the Graphic Work is now on display at the Lowe Art Museum, and it is one of the most artful and inventive retrospectives the campus space has showcased this semester.

Some of these pieces are small, occasionally miniature gems depicting women on a balcony or even Mount Fuji, while others are large prints, showing everything from the chaotic streets of Manhattan to sensible, though humorous portraits of admired fellow artists such as Picasso and Willem de Kooning.

What sets Grooms aside from other printmakers, however, are his vivid 3-D lithographs that have been cut and assembled to replicate real objects – i.e., they jut off the wall to produce almost “real” figures and places. To say the least, these works are badass, no doubt about it, it’s like watching cartoons on mescaline.

Grooms recreates urban scenes so lifelike it’s scary. But besides these metropolitan tableaus, check out his carousel, bull ring, movie theater, Guggenheim Museum, opera house, and his lively 3-D lithographs of Fats Domino and one of Dali in, accordingly, a surrealistic salad medley.

Spanning over 50 years, Grooms’ work here reflects all he’s seen and experienced in his life. But, it’s most interesting to observe, as mentioned earlier, his unique, quirky vision of artists before his time and of his contemporaries. These were created as a droll sort of homage to these people that haven’t necessarily influenced him but, perhaps, have given him inspiration.

Rather than a making a clear-cut portrayal, Grooms inserts elements that could familiarize the viewer with the artist being drawn and impressionably accentuates certain aspects, such as Jackson Pollock’s untamed technique of wildly dropping paint onto the canvas.

Most importantly, the pieces are approachable and informal without losing their artistry. That’s really the moral of the story with Grooms. His talent as an artist seems only to be augmented by the casual style in which he creates his work – from drawings on rice paper in black and white to grand, multicolored prints that are masterful, slightly cartoonish pieces.

Even more, his work reflects a particular time and place. Nostalgia runs rampant throughout the show in such a way that you feel right there with Grooms as he was bringing them to life. It’s escapism at its best.

Red Grooms: Selections from the Graphic Work is at the Lowe Art Museum, 1301 Stanford Dr. on campus, through January 18. Call 305-284-3535 for more info.

Sarah Giusti can be reached at Tthinkerr@aol.com.

Life & Art Associate Editor

“Strangers Abound”

Tension attack and interweaving veins
will implode then SNAP, no, no, perhaps
it will be slow, enduring CRACKS, then
they will explode and you gather the
pieces to try and make a durable cohesion,
the self is at its end, breakages delineating
its functional system, pesty rodents
drumming away in cacophonous legions –
AH!
Settle down, we need not be feeble, the
heart must not stop and chase off all the
evil, dark stares and nauseating glares, get
me out of here, I need some air, yes, yes,
somehow, out there, I’ll walk on stomping,
heart and soul gushing out and longing,
body littered on the ground in a place
unfound, just longing for nothing else but
love for life itself where strangers abound.

and the Life & Art clan

SLAYER
Soundtrack to the Apocalypse
****

There’s only one metal band on the planet that has been around for 20 years and remains just as genuine, hard, and undeniably wicked. Need a hint? Pull up your sleeve. While countless ’80s metal bands (namely Metallica) have long been stroking ZETA deejays, the Kings of Metal stay true to their roots: they’re still the same “evil thrash” band they were back when you were head banging in the womb.

Soundtrack to the Apocalypse is a four-CD box-set chronicling the Huntington Beach, Cali quartet’s career over two decades, scrolling from 1986’s Reign in Blood to 2002’s God Hates Us All, that is buried with home recordings, garage sessions, live versions, and a DVD of live gigs.

Somehow it is still lacking a few devilish rarities (“War Ensemble-Hellraiser Remix” and the “Seasons In the Abyss” version with the flute, you know?) and oddly excludes tracks off their first three LPs.

Still, with five-plus hours of heavy metal riffs, soaring guitar solos, and the signature Slayer speed that: makes your heart pump out of your heaving chest, makes you want to break shit, makes you flick off your neighbor, makes you kill the Rumplemintz, and makes you scream along with Tom Araya’s ideological lyrics about sex, Satan and death, this set does not fuck around.

“On your knees/ My satisfaction is what I need/The urge to take my fist/And violate every orifice.” (Holy shit that makes me hot.)

Leftfield highlights include a tight version of “Disorder” with Ice-T and a rousing cover of Suicidal Tendencies’ “Memories of Tomorrow.” If you’re still wiping peroxide on that forearm wound, go ahead and invest in the Deluxe Limited Edition, which slips in an additional bonus live album from 1992 with kick-ass ex-drummer Dave Lombardo packaged in a faux blood sleeve with floating skulls in it. Sweet.

– Lila Dominguez

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V/A
Buddyhead Presents: Gimme Skelter
***1/2

Upon listening to this compilation dished out by the Cali shit talkers at Buddyhead, there is only one thing that can be said: Nardwuar the Human Serviette.

Never mind the amazing job that Iggy Pop does with the interludes on the album, and it is not worth noting that Mudhoney finally returns to the glory they knew circa Superfuzz Bigmuff but had completely lost by last year’s Since We’ve Become Translucent.

Awesome tracks by Pleasure Forever, The Starvations, and Beehive and the Barracudas pale in comparison to the glory that is Nardwuar. Before we get started, the only other tracks worth mentioning here are a Weezer song dug up from the depths of a concept album/rock opera that was supposed to be the follow-up to the “Blue Album” and the amazingly titled “What the Fuck Do You Think Christina Aguilera is Doing Right Now?” by Shat.

For praise of the cuts courtesy of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Le Tigre and the Icarus Line, Buddyhead.com probably offers up a lifetime’s supply. But my review all comes down to the album’s closer, an eight-minute interview with Miami resident Iggy Pop by, yes, Nardwuar.

This legend is a self-described “31-year-old man child” who conducts interviews for Vancouver, B.C. radio station CITR, various magazines, and Canadian TV station Much Music. There was a time when even Floridians could experience the magic of Nardwuar on Much, but then they started that “Much USA” crap and decided the American sense of humor couldn’t handle a savant of such comic sophistication.

Luckily for the States, his genius is again available to non-Canucks thanks to the efforts of Buddyhead’s Travis and Aaron. Topic to topic, Nardwuar jumps wildly, while staying fixated on Iggy’s cock, asking questions like “Now, Mr. Pop, did you really show your cock-ring to Tina ‘Ginger’ Louise from ‘Gilligan’s Island’ fame?” (Answer: yes, he did) and “Iggy, where did you first pop out your cock on stage? When was the first time? Do you remember it?” (Answer: it was in 1968, in Romeo, Michigan).

Other highlights include Nard asking Pop about an alleged sexual advance by William Shatner, and yet another discussion with Iggy about feigning homosexuality in order to avoid the draft.

This is a damn fine compilation of rock tracks, but the last one looms over them like a huge Viking shadow.

– James Hush
Programming Director, WVUM 90.5

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RICK JAMES
The Best of Rick James: The Millenium Collection
****1/2 (out of a possible five, son!)

Twenty minutes of Rick James at his prime is more exciting than your entire pathetic existence added up 20 years from now. The Man packed more funk, sleaze, leather, drugs and kinky (really kinky) sex into a 17-year span than any other musician to date (sans maybe R. Kelly and, well, let’s be fair and wait it ou…actually, what the hell, and the King of Pop).

Rick lived with Neil Young before we knew who either of them was, he’ll confidently tell you that he has slept with thousands of women, and he even had a cameo on Mr. T’s “A-Team,” although he forgot his lines because, as he told The Onion in a 2001 interview he was “up all night with a couple girls, getting high and having ferocious sex.”

Unfortunately, this appetite left him serving two years in the belly of the beast for beating the hell out of one unlucky girl, and for being too courteous with his blow to a luckier one, before lovin’ again hardcore.

This disc bursts out of its pants from the get-go with the 1981 mega-hit-it-or-quit-it “Superfreak,” the jittery jam that launched his Street Songs LP to triple platinum global superville success.

“You and I” and “Mary Jane” guide you into the middle of the crack sensation, ranked in the same arrangement as they were on the 1978 classic Come Get It! Try to name a better funk debut, ’cause you can’t fool.

Wipe each other off and skip the next track (nobody cares about Smokey Robinson’s part in “Ebony Eyes”), pump up the volume like C. Slater and thrust your leather-bound crotch to “Give It To Me Baby” in every girl’s face you see on campus, especially if you’re driving, or better yet, roller-skating. Yeah, roller-skating. Actually, learn from James’ mistakes and keep this masterpiece in the bedroom and shower.

Rick says the females can’t resist that one, and if they does, er, do then “Dance Wit’ Me” is up next; meaning you can shed your clothes (take off the skates first though) and climb into any fountain on campus and sing along to “Look at me I’m soakin’ wet / Like I was in a shower/ When I’m dancin’ with you, baby, now, now!”

See, Rick James just wants us all to get wild, wet freak nasty sex all the time, finals be damned.

– Kevin Dean
UM Surfrider Prez

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SINGLE FRAME ASHTRAY
Burn Radio Airtest
***

Disregard the static leading you in at the on-set as a conscience effort, keep your head from throbbing towards the close of track seven, and embrace the similarities between Single Frame Ashtray and a handful of other outfits playing these days: you might be missing the point.

A trio does not have to smack you in the face as a taunt to shrug off all other pretenses in modern music. Nor do they have to outreach the creativity and catchiness of rock’s current top tier groups like Q and Not U and LIARS (whose forthcoming LP on Mute will make this and nearly every other band seem 20-years retro in the dance punk game).

Really, all a gang of three like Texas’ Single Frame Ashtray has to do is embrace the space in their sound and pummel forward without tripping up into a knot of white noise. On the EP, Burn Radio Airtest, the novel idea of drums, guitar, and keyboard is put into full effect for five tracks of raucous if occasionally immature yelps and rhythms.

With today’s obsessive talk of influences wearing thin, SFA clearly know this, wearing the past on their sleeve and paying no mind to stuttering pretense until it’s a well-knitted, hip sweater right in time for winter.

A remix by CREEPYKID is hit back during the one-and-a-half minute response called “Eavesdropper (Insomniatronic Mix)” and only makes things more interesting. Manipulating the vocals to the point of no return, it is all squall/pulse with a telephone voice disrupted by screwed transmission on the microphone.

Reminiscent of David Byrne and Brian Eno’s My Life In the Bush of Ghosts, Single Frame mans the helm with the concluding “100,000 Troops,” which rounds third towards an important aspect of post-punk: songs do not have to sound like songs to exist as concrete pieces of music.

– Michael John Hancock
Lead singer, The Empirical Mile