Last Friday, 6:30 p.m., on the Palm Court of the Memorial Building, there appeared to be a turn-of-the-century hippie commune, candles flaring around the palm trees and multi-colored Day Glo-type hammocks hovering above the grass. People were mingling, drooping languidly on the swinging bed-seats, pondering sparking a spliff or wondering what architects Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt really had in mind.

Others-students, teachers, and unknown observers-gathered around a piece called “The Wishing Tree.” Pennies and a few lucky dimes litter the ground beneath a tree stripped of its leaves, cold and barren, aside from the fake vivid red carnations that have been twisted to the ends of the branches with some kind of twine. Looking closer, a few phony little painted birds are ensnared within the branches and 10 candles as well as one larger spotlight illuminate the whole work.

When realizing that this wishing tree gives the impression of looking at it from below, it starts to dawn on you why the installations are titled The Sky Above Us.

Running into Roberto Behar, he asks me if I made a wish at “The Wishing Tree.” If I were as enthusiastic as this man that my wish would come true, I would have dumped buckets of pennies below the tree. It just seems to me that the tree is a giant contradiction, if it is art. It appears dead, yet has this bright red flowering all over it. Perhaps the tree is just bleeding a painful red out through these unnaturally occurring flowers. Or, even more, it may just be a tongue-in-cheek, ironic installation beckoning students and others to make a wish, to fancy the idea that you’ll get an A on the next test or that the sexy frat boy in your class will give it to you good at next weekend’s party (I’m being sardonic myself here), but the tree itself is corny and may be mocking people for doing what it invites everyone to do.

When I ask an architecture student what he thinks is going on, he tells me that the art is the 16 hammocks dangling around. Art? I was looking forward to taking a nap there after I looked at the actual art. The student then explains to me that these hammocks are conceptual, using changing space as the backdrop for the concept. What I’m hoping though is that the artists have set up these hammocks to comment on the fact that this school is more of a Club Med resort than a rigorous, intellectual academic institution.

The hammocks will be here until the 27th of November and chances are that a line will form full of people that have no idea that there is art going on here-they just want to swing in a hammock. People hanging around may not be aware that they are sitting on art, but they are altering the original space in the Palm Court. Then again, Unicco workers adding stone benches around campus are also changing the aesthetic and architectural space. Maybe we all need to plant a tree or install loveseats along the water so we can leave our mark and modify our surroundings as well.

Rachael Henrichsen can be reached at rachluv@aol.com

Many film aficionados get annoyed with some of the celebrity life-story movies Hollywood produces today-films like Evita make it seem like anyone with a little love and tragedy in their life can get a couple million bucks for their life story. Frida, a new film about the life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, seems like it should fit this mold as well and though Kahlo’s life was certainly interesting, and her art has been loved for decades, nothing particularly astounding happens. The difference between Frida and the Madonna-disaster Evita, however, is that Frida is pulled off brilliantly by everyone involved.

Director Julie Taymor follows up her directing debut, Titus, with an amazing effort in Frida. The movie itself appears as much a work of art as Kahlo’s paintings. Nearly every scene is splashed in beautiful colors and characters are donned in astonishing costumes. The sets and backdrops (the movie is set in the early 20th century) are wonderful creations and Taymor directs the film in the way only a woman could – with grace and beauty, yet bold elegance.

Kahlo is played by Salma Hayek, who rivals Adam Sandler on this year’s most improved list. Hayek puts past flops like Wild Wild West and 54 to rest with a terrific performance in Frida, which she also produced. Hayek was the one who finally brought the artist’s life story to the screen, fighting studio execs who didn’t find it interesting enough to pay for. Moreover, she brought in Hollywood buddies Ed Norton and Antonio Banderas for cameos, and Norton also did uncredited rewrites on the script.

Commencing with Kahlo as a schoolgirl, running around with friends and admiring a famous older painter, Diego Rivera, the film then proceeds into the artist’s horrific accident on a trolley, which ends in many broken bones and a full body cast. During her recovery, she starts to paint and eventually asks Rivera to critique her work. The two fall in love, and, although she knows he’s a womanizer, Kahlo agrees to marry him.
They love each other at first, and even travel to New York together for Rivera to paint a mural in a building owned by the Rockefeller family. When he presents Nelson Rockefeller (Norton) with the result-a communism-inspired work-Rockefeller begs him to reconsider. Rivera stands behind his art, and Rockefeller has the giant mural torn down, ricocheting Rivera into a downward spiral, and he takes Kahlo with him.

While having many issues of her own, including outlandish political views, alcoholism and bisexuality, the pair end up divorcing. She gets back with Rivera for a short time before her death, and her last wish to have her body burned wraps up the movie with brilliant artistic style.

Frida is an arty film, containing heavy doses of symbolism and crafty camerawork. The characters seem real and have a special depth, especially Rivera, played by Alfred Molina (Chocolat). Between Taymor, Hayek, Molina and the cinematography and art crew, Frida should be a major force come Oscar time.

Shawn Wines can be reached at shawnwines@aol.com

Love is in the air. Bah, humbug. The holiday season is a time when people are divided into those who have a loved one and those who have not. Bitter, party of one, your table is ready. Somehow, though, all the concern tends to dissipate as one watches the musical production that Bruce Miller bravely dabbles in. The play’s timeliness plays a significant role, and even if audience members are without a significant other, it makes one think of the values we hold dear and close to our hearts when we choose a mate. That is right, boys and girls, this show, based on a play by Miklos Laszlo who wrote the play that inspired You’ve Got Mail, insinuates that a person could fall in love with the loathed identity that just won’t leave your life.
Mr. Kenneth Kurtz’s set is nothing short of spectacular. For a UM production that is under-funded in relation to professional venues, it does not compromise in the least. There are rotating, circulating, moveable set pieces that keep your attention at every moment, so that even when a mock light fell onto the floor, no one seemed to mind. When a play is cast this well, it ensures that the audience will invest itself for the entire length of the play.
The interesting variety of voices chosen by N. David Williams raises a hair or two on the back of the neck, but also makes one wonder why all the talented women in this production give the audience just about the same range. Nevertheless, when the ensemble comes together, all the voices mix into a delightful melody that had patrons humming the tunes afterwards. It’s catchy.
Georg (Paul Haasch) and Amalia (Lindsay Smith) work so well together on stage that the audience wants to see them hook up, no matter the obstacles. Even better is Ashley Atkina’s character, Llona, who sings most delightfully, and Normand Rocha as Arpad, who gives the show a variance of comic relief to talk about over dinner. One of the best moments of the play is a restaurant sequence that runs flawlessly like clockwork. One of the worst is a pretentious snow scene that is noisy and takes away from the actors’ moments on stage. The talented musician brought on board is pleasing to listen to, switching from a piano to a keyboard in an effective fashion.
During the finale, one will feel satisfied with the UM Theatre Department’s way of handling this genre, as all the effort and preparation that encompasses the show proves to be well worth it. In a world full of much hatred and sorrow, it is comforting to be able to sit in a dark theatre and be entertained by some local talent – people who are on their to becoming the next major stars of the stage.
She Loves Me plays at the Ring Theatre on campus until November 23rd. Call (305) 284-3355 for more information.

Josh Caraballo can be reached at email4josh@aol.com

As the story goes, three men from Wisconsin-Butch Vig (one of the producers of Nevermind), Steve Marker and Duke Erikson were starting a band and searching for a lead singer when they spotted an Angelfish music video featuring Shirley Manson. The latter was tracked down, imported from her native Scotland, and Garbage was born. Their three albums, 1995’s self-titled breakthrough, 1998’s Grammy-nominated Version 2.0, and 2001’s eclectic Beautiful Garbage, the band has been incredibly innovative and imaginative, continually dishing out solid rock records that mix strong pop melodies with electronic sounds and raging guitars.

Manson’s voice-portraying both strength and vulnerability-and provocative lyrics helped rocket the group to stardom with singles like “Only Happy When It Rains,” “Special,” “Androgyny” and “Stupid Girl,” all of which are both edgy and appetizing.

Currently on tour with No Doubt, the group opened for Gwen Stefani and her posse at Fort Lauderdale’s Office Depot Center on Oct. 30. Life & Art chatted with Erikson moments before Garbage blazed the stage for their show in Seattle, Washington.

Q: “Cherry Lips” [a saccharine sweet song worthy of 60s Motown tune about a 12-year old boy who turns tricks in drag] is the best track on Eclectic Garbage. Why has it not been released in the U.S.?
Duke: We’ve been asking that too, it’s kind of a weird thing-a label decision. This record didn’t fare as well in the U.S. as it did in Europe compared to our past records. There is also a problem with the state of radio these days. None of the singles seemed to fit a “radio formula.” We’ve pretty much let this record go, it had a healthy number of sales, and basically it was our fans that bought the record.
The lyrics to “Cherry Lips” were also a bit subversive. We tend to shoot ourselves in the foot, but that’s what we do-it’s the music we make. We made a strange record, and when you put it into the context of what is happening right now, well that’s the chance you take with the conglomeration of all these songs on one record. We’ve been censored a few times in our careers. The video for “Queer” was too violent and too weird, so some scenes were censored for MTV, despite the much more disturbing things they play.

Q: Has JT LeRoy [author of Sarah, the novel that inspired “Cherry Lips”] heard the song?
Duke: Yeah he loves it. He’s been to a few of our shows, and I think it really meant a lot to him that we did that.

Q: Despite the ubiquitous depressing songs, it seems that the tone of the albums have progressed to being lighter rather than darker. Would you say that Garbage as a band is happier now than when you were making your first record?
Duke: [laughs] I don’t know, I think in some ways we are, yet in some ways we are the same. We’re definitely not looking at life through rose-colored glasses. We’ve all stated that life is too complex to say that we’re happy or sad. You savor the happy times and get through the sad times. Sometimes you experience both at the same time. There are different layers in our lives, and that’s how we try to present out music.

Q: Have you guys started work on the fourth album yet?
Duke: We’ve worked on it a little bit. We got together for a week or so in a studio and started to improvise to see what happened. We came up with a few ideas, these really long, ridiculous jams of nonsense. We don’t know what kind of sound the record is going to have yet. We’re sifting through the stuff. We’re going to meet again in January to see what we come up with and start recording. We want to try to stay out of the studio as long as possible.

Q: It seems that you guys are always sequestered in your Wisconsin studio in the middle of the winter working on your record for months.
Duke: [laughs] It seems that way because that is how it is. It’s ridiculous; we want to be more ready.

Q: “Only Happy When It Rains” was recently listed by Rolling Stone magazine and MTV as one of the best 100 pop songs ever. Do you think that is your best song? Do have any other favorites?
Duke: It’s a good song, it’s not our best song, but I’m not sure what would be. It’s definitely one of our most accessible and recognizable songs. Our songs are all so different from each other; they have personality and character. It’s like talking about people.

Q: Were you guys disappointed about the commercial success of Beautiful Garbage?
Duke: We were really happy and proud of the record. Every song on there is different from ones on our previous records. It’s a strange collection of songs that didn’t fit together, and we were aware of that and the fact that we might even lose a couple of fans because it’s not what people were familiar with. We were prepared for it, but we hoped for a little better response. It didn’t discourage us, but we weren’t prepared for the fact that it had no home on the radio. We thought it would find more airplay, but that’s the nature of the business. You take your chance when you step into unexplored regions. You don’t know what’s going to happen, so it’s not a total shock.

Q: Did the title of the album come from the line in Hole’s “Celebrity Skin?” [“Oh, Cinderella they aren’t sluts like you/Beautiful garbage, beautiful dresses/can you stand up/or will you just fall down?”]
Duke: It sure did. Shirley’s always said so.

Q: Are any of the members of Garbage working on any musical side projects?
Duke: Butch did some work with the band AFI, but he’s not doing that now obviously. Being in Garbage is a full time job. There’s been room to do it, but when we have time off we’re either dealing with Garbage business, writing music for the next record, or trying to relax.

Q: Where do you see Garbage in five years?
Duke: I hope we’ll have a new record out, maybe two or three. This whole experience with Garbage has been one of surprises. We’ve never known what was going to happen down the pipe. We have no master plan; we’ve never gotten to the point where we want to force it. We just follow our road and continue to do what we do.

Horacio Sierra can be reached at madnapo@aol.com

“The King of Pop” has it bad these days. Not only did Michael Jackson have to appear in court for a breach-of-contract $21 million lawsuit claiming he owes loot for pulling out of two millennium concerts, but he also might have gone through way too much surgery and too many nose jobs. “His nose is more collapsed than it ever was. That’s also consistent with the fact he’s been walking around wearing surgical masks in recent times,” Beverly Hills plastic surgeon Dr. Richard Fleming said on Friday. With each operation, the blood circulation to the area decreases and the risks of scarring and infection increase. “I would never go back and do work on Michael Jackson’s nose … it is just too risky,” Fleming added.

“Party Drugs” are becoming trendy in Singapore’s young and rebellious. Abusing drugs such as Ketamine, Ecstasy and “Ice” (an amphetamine-type stimulant) is common, despite tough drug laws and painstaking crackdowns on drug rings. The government is therefore distributing copies of make-believe accounts of substance abusers to alert the youth.

Standing in the Shadows of Motown is a new flick highlighting the lesser-known musicians that helped make stars of legends such as Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson. It hit theatres last Friday.

The grim, gloomy world of thugged-out hip hop makes news once again as three associates of Death Row Records founder Suge Knight, Kordell Depree Knox, Michael Payne and Theodore Kelly have been arrested for allegedly conspiring to murder a gang rival. Compton police affirmed that the arrests have nothing to do with the Biggie and Tupac murders and that Knight is not a suspect either. Sure.

A Nirvana “best-of” compilation has just been released and debuted in the top ten in 11 countries. The album features the never-before-released track “You Know You’re Right” and, moreover, a book amassed from frontman Kurt Cobain’s many journal entries may very well make the New York Times’ number one spot on their best seller list that will be published on Nov. 24.

When most UM students think of famous alumni, people like Jim Kelly, Gloria Estefan or (to the administration’s disdain) Steve-O from Jackass pop into their heads. However, entertainment-savvy students may espy a different person altogether. Ray Liotta graduated from UM in 1977, and now has a reputation as one of the most dedicated and intense actors in Hollywood.

Liotta, the star of classic American films ranging from Goodfellas to Field of Dreams, was in town to promote his newest film, Narc, and talked with Life & Art at the swank Presidential Suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Coconut Grove. What follows is a discussion that traces his beginnings as a singer/dancer in the UM theatre department to his accomplishments as a “made” man in cinema.

It’s important to note that I, your lovable writer, am about as cool as Screech from “Saved By the Bell.” I never know what to say or how to say it, and I lack that cocky interviewer attitude of “he’s no better than me.” Hell yeah, he’s better than me. He’s also richer than me, better-looking than me and most definitely stronger than me. So smoothness is not in my repertoire. For instance, I had to look up “swank” at dictionary.com for proper usage in the above paragraph – because you just can’t have a movie star interview without something being called “swank” (imposingly fashionable or elegant; grand).

The day before the interview, I watched the widelyacclaimed Goodfellas. If I were interviewing Mike Tyson, I would equate this to watching the “I’m gonna eat your children” speech in a continuous loop. There is something about the descent of Liotta’s character into a coke-dealing, murderous gangster that – while genius – did not ease my nerves. The butterflies were multiplying like Bebe’s Kids.

After a night spent in la-la-land getting beat up by a drug-peddling mobster, I finally awoke and drove to the aforementioned center of swankness in Coconut Grove. The Ritz played host to Liotta’s press stop in Miami – an area Liotta knew and still knows quite well.

At this point, my day had been going well. I woke up on time, threw on my underused formal clothes and mangled zero Bentleys on the way to the Grove. Still, somewhere in the back of my mind was an image of Liotta from the mega flop, Turbulence, homicidally pacing the aisles of a storm-addled airplane.

Liotta eased all fears by being a genuinely nice guy. Sporting a loose black shirt and those trademark squinty eyes, he broke the ice with a line he has probably used a thousand times, but was still rad to hear. Lying back on a colossal sofa and sensing my nervousness, he said, “Well, I’m just an asshole from Jersey.”

The conversation took off with the indie-drama, Narc, which I had seen a few days prior. Scheduled to open wide in January, Narc, which Liotta also produced, is a low-budget throwback to old film noir movies, spiced up with swift editing tricks and meaty dialogue. I’m glad Liotta inquired about my thoughts on this film instead of Operation Dumbo Drop.

“I loved it, Mr. Liotta. Especially the part where you had to shove the giant sleeping pill in the elephant’s ass! What a great family film!” Sarcasm aside, Narc is a superb film, with terrific performances from Liotta and Jason Patric (pretend Speed 2 never happened).

Liotta admits to regretting a few roles, but did not specify further. It’s nice to hear an actor confess to doing films for money and/or to fulfill contractual obligations, instead of the generic star who declares every work “brilliant.”

When speaking about Narc, Liotta exudes serious enthusiasm and pride – and for good reason. After reading a script from an unknown writer/director, he admired it so much that he signed on for a role and a producing credit. Liotta’s attachment helped raise money for the film, and positive buzz from a screening at the Sundance Film Festival brought even more star wattage onboard, including Tom Cruise (Narc’s executive producer).

During his high school years in New Jersey, Liotta grew fond of acting. He joined the drama group after getting into a fight with his basketball coach, and with lackluster grades, he enrolled at UM, when “you just needed a pulse to get in.”

He lathered himself in the “Suntan U” lifestyle, and eventually switched his major from liberal arts to drama because it seemed easier. For Liotta, acting at UM was a way to impress a girl he had met in line at a meeting for drama majors. A first role as a dancing waiter in “Cabaret” got him hooked, and from there on he was doing “all the plays, all the time” for the next four years. He landed a gig in the soap opera, “Another World,” and five years later took the leap into cinema.

The storybook lucky break came in 1986, with Something Wild, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination.

After a sluggish lull in the 90s, Liotta is once again being lit in lime, so to speak. Films like Hannibal, Heartbreakers, Blow, and John Q were all major releases – three of them grossing over $50 million theatrically. With the limited release of Narc in December, a wider release scheduled in January, and his next movie, Identity, with John Cusack, in the works, the ball is definitely rolling.

When he is not acting, he spends time with his three and a half year-old daughter, and enjoys working out and playing basketball. If he goes for more than a month without working he gets anxious. Leisure time is also dedicated to watching movies – his favorites belong to the same genres he is usually associated with. He mentioned The Godfather trilogy, The French Connection, Chinatown and Serpico, and Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Gene Hackman among his favorite actors.

According to Liotta, aspiring actors need to rack up as much experience as possible. “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity,” he says, and he feels that there is nothing more important than being fully prepared when a rare ray of luck shines in. He got his first acting gig by spontaneously repeating one of his UM monologues in an agent’s office.
Despite my limited experience as a journalist/critic, and my un-swank nature, Liotta appeared to be a real guy, giving heartfelt and original answers to questions he has no doubt heard from every reporter for the past 15 years. His advice to young actors was dead on, and he was legitimately interested in my thoughts about Narc.

With Identity slated for a release in April, Liotta looks to be a major force in the action/drama genre once again. Not bad for “an asshole from Jersey”.

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