Tag: Featured

No wonder Bruce Wayne retired from being Batman. Everybody wants to psychoanalyze the guy: His butler, his burglar, his nemesis, his police commissioner, and practically anyone with a hand in managing his assets. Among other things, he is accused of pretense and, perhaps worse, of “practiced apathy.” Well, it was a double identity, and a dubious one, after all.
Of course it’s only a temporary retirement (at least until it becomes permanent), and at the outset of The Dark Knight Rises, it’s more or less mandatory; the caped crusader’s city, historically rather weird with mask-wearers and turncoats, no longer trusts him. All the more grist for director and psychoanalyst-in-chief Christopher Nolan’s mill: Two films in the rebooted Batman franchise already behind him, and still with so much more head-shrinking to do. In Nolan’s estimation, this grand trilogy-capper finale still requires two hours and 44 more minutes of duking and talking things out.

For the casual viewer, familiarity with the vicissitudes of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight is not required. Scripting again with his brother Jonathan, Nolan seems glad to summarize: It’s about power, justice, virtue, and philosophical challenges thereto, not to mention the considered aesthetics of the summer blockbuster set piece. It takes so long because the Nolans think it strategic not just to delve into backstory, but also to revise it while we wait. Although often self-nullifying, this is showmanship, of a sort: They understand that sometimes it’s fun being inside a movie for so long. Even, maybe especially, one so tense, huge, noisy, dark and unswervingly glum as this.

Helpful signposts abound, some in human form: the butler played by Michael Caine, the burglar played by Anne Hathaway, the commissioner played by Gary Oldman. They’re all fine, and comfortably familiar—even franchise-newcomer Hathaway (who only hits a few false notes). The nemesis is a respirator-faced hulk called Bane (Tom Hardy), who resembles Darth Vader without his helmet, or an uppity BDSM man-slave with vengefully revolutionary ambitions. Backed up by a squad of glowering thugs, he’s the Tea Party multiplied by Occupy.
Bane and Batman have a certain personal trainer in common, and it shows when they get to fighting. The fighting is like the dialogue: labored, with most natural movement restricted by so much preliminary suiting up, and a lot of people—extras, the audience—waiting around for the blows to land. They do land, at least, sounding like bombs.

Speaking of stuff blowing up, Bane’s agenda includes a lot of that, not the least of which is a 4-megaton time bomb. Also, there are hostages at the stock exchange, rough kangaroo-court justice, and most of the city’s police force trapped underground. Heavy stuff. One surfacer is a clever beat cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, looking good and growing into the movie as it grooms him—but for what? Let’s reflect on how everything that rises must converge, and how well, over these last few films, Christian Bale has grown into those dubious double-identity heroics. When he finally does retire for real, doesn’t somebody have to take over?

Billy Hunt is a Charlottesville-based photographer who pairs fun, accessible concepts with high-quality image-making. He’s probably best known for his extensive photography of the Collective of Lady’s Arm Wrestling (CLAW) project, as well as a client list that includes Dave Matthews Band, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post. His photos are bright and inviting without looking overly sleek or commercial. He’s at his best when capturing attractive documents of wild, impromptu spectacle—either found, or created. And his most recent project has brought more attention than anything he’s done before.

Scream portraits is just what the name says: a series of portraits in which each of the subjects is screaming. It’s a simple idea that is instantly understandable and immediately engaging. The shots are framed like traditional portraiture—a head-and-shoulders medium shot against a cloth backdrop—but the scream allows us to see a side that’s often hidden. Hunt takes the pictures with a camera connected to a karaoke boombox, dubbed the Screamotron3000. The box is wired so that the mic input levels trigger the shutter. Screaming allows the subjects to cut loose, and the results are wild. Subjects shriek, holler, and even tear at their clothes, frozen into still and silent moments of expression. Some look joyous, while others seem to be expelling pent-up rage. Local chef Rick Easton looks legitimately furious. My immediate response was to wonder what each of them was screaming.

“I’ve had people curse a blue streak at me,” Hunt said. “I’ve had people tell me they never loved me. I’m really open to all of it.” The results mainly fall into three categories: joy, anger, and sadness. “Mostly it’s joy mixed with a bit of anger, or joy mixed with a bit of sadness. But never anger and sadness at the same time,” said Hunt. “Some people pretty much go fetal when they’re getting ready for it. Some people look down. Some people naturally look up while they’re screaming. Some of them are consciously looking to God. A few people end up crossing their eyes in the photos, which looks really insane. They’re all beautiful little snowflakes.”

Hunt’s project has brought him no shortage of subjects willing to let loose for the camera, as well as attention from Wired magazine, “The Today Show,” NPR and the Huffington Post. “It’s blowing up. This thing is huge,” he said. “I would never have guessed that it would have such resonance with people. They love to do it. They almost like doing it more than looking at the pictures. It’s a way for them to interact with the arts.”

The idea for the project came out of frustration with contemporary portraiture. We’re an increasingly image-savvy culture, and it’s made us increasingly self-conscious about how we appear. “I saw how people—myself included—sabotage ourselves when we’re being photographed,” Hunt said. “My friends are thoughtful, considerate people, but we end up taking the worst pictures ever. I wanted to break people out of that, to get pictures where they’re not overthinking it. People don’t really care about looking seriously at photography anymore,” he said. “Image-making is so ubiquitous now. I practically have to put my photos in a Crackerjack box to get people to look at them. So I wanted something that would also have value as an experience.”

So did asking the subjects to scream remove their inhbitions? “It totally didn’t work,” Hunt said. “As it turns out, people are still really self-conscious while they’re screaming. And the reality of it is so much more interesting: You can see a war between the different parts of the brain. They’re all still thinking ‘How do I look?,’ but screaming is inherently unglamorous.” Hunt points out that people looking at photos of themselves will still see totally different things than what other people see while looking at those same photos.
The process led Hunt to start shooting slow-motion video of the screams as well. “There’s an arc to it. Some people just make one little peep, and some of them go on forever. A lot of people start to get self-conscious partway through the scream: ‘Is this a trick? Am I getting Punk’d?’ But once the steam blows off, you do get to see a little bit of what’s really under there. At this point, the fact that they’re screaming has become the least interesting thing about it, to me,” he says. “What’s really interesting is the way we expect ourselves to look, and the way we end up sabotaging that.”

As for the future of the project, Hunt says that he’s “looking for a travel trailer. I’d love to take this on tour, to county fairs and things like that. I’d love to shoot some celebs, too. Get Justin Beiber screaming.”

“Project Runway” 
Thursday 9pm, Lifetime
It wasn’t long ago that I was bemoaning the state of this once-great fashion design show, but the charming “All Stars” spin-off did a lot to cleanse my Gretchen-and-Anya-stained palate (a second “All Stars” season is reportedly in the pipeline, by the way). Season 10 will feature 16 wannabe fashionistas vying to become the next great American fashion designer, and will feature the now-familiar team of Heidi Klum, Michael Kors, Nina Garcia, and Tim Gunn. One of the new designers is named Gunnar Deatherage. I can’t wait to hear how Tim and Heidi pronounce that one.

“Bachelor Pad” 
Monday 8pm, ABC
ABC’s “Bachelor” and its two spin-offs, “The Bachelorette” and this show, have emerged as the unlikely warhorse of the reality-TV mainstays. There have been a whopping 27 seasons between the three programs and they continue to pull in substantial viewership, especially for a decade-old franchise. It’s especially impressive when you consider that almost none of the relationships followed by the show have panned out, although a look through the various cast bios show an incredibly incestuous little world where former suitors from various seasons have since paired up in real life. Hence “Bachelor Pad,” a game show that gives these chiseled white folks another shot at “love,” but which also admits that these people mostly just want fame and money. In a twist this time around, among the 20 contestants will be five super fans who will join the largely awful former “Bachelor” and “Bachelorette” contestants.

“Alphas” 
Monday 10pm, Syfy
If you’re a fan of the X-Men comics and movies, or still raw over how horribly bungled NBC’s “Heroes” turned out after that excellent first season, this Syfy drama might be up your alley. David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck) plays a scientist/psychiatrist who becomes aware of the existence of people with extraordinary abilities. Much like Professor Xavier, he gathers these folks—one can heighten her senses at will, one has super reflexes, etc.—to help track down other so-called “alphas,” and to work with the government on covert cases. Season 2 is stocked with nerd-baiting guest stars like Sean Astin (Sam from Lord of the Rings, but always Mikey from Goonies to me), C. Thomas Howell (currently on the big screen in The Amazing Spider-Man), Lauren Holly, and Summer Glau, beloved by dorks but a certified showkiller (“Firefly,” “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,” “Dollhouse,” “The Cape”).

The new Wes Anderson movie is certainly a richer pastiche than anything else you’ll see at the multiplex this season. And in its Andersonian manner, Moonrise Kingdom is a nourishing regressive pleasure, a sort of summer movie for grown-ups. Yes, the manner is mannered, but the intention is noble: to affirm the dignity of escapism by direct example.

And so we find the New England island town of “New Penzance” sent into mild upheaval when a serious and sensitive Boy Scout (Jared Gilman) runs away with the headstrong misfit girl he decides he loves (Kara Hayward). This being a Wes Anderson movie, the kids are precocious; it feels good and righteous to root for them, like reclaiming those pre-adult prerogatives regrettably ceded to the pose of maturity. Wasn’t summer once supposed to be about the pure liberty of endless possibilities?

Anderson still knows better than anybody how to survey the cusp of adolescence with all the existential angst of a mid-life crisis, and for relief’s sake, to salt his findings with droll irony. Co-written with Roman Coppola, set in the 1960s, and shot by Anderson’s regular cinematographer Robert Yeoman, Moonrise Kingdom accommodates not just retro flourishes of Euro-mod chic, but also the emotional aura of some wistfully remembered Charlie Brown holiday special. Habitually, Anderson revels in bric-a-brac production design, eloquent riffs on stagings from his earlier films, and a tendency to arrange his stars—Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Edward Norton, Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, Bruce Willis—in handsome tableaux. The filmmaker’s musical affinities lean toward English composers; sometimes it seems like instead of a full film narrative he should’ve just tried a music video for the entirety of Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols. Which, of course, would be fantastic.

But the movie’s characters—in particular its refreshingly un-actorly protagonists, so poignantly and palpably unformed, nicely set off against all that art direction—seem quite helpfully, people-like. All the grown-ups are in some way hapless, and therefore implicitly obliging to the youngsters’ enterprise. With heart-swelling sympathy and sincerity, Norton, as the scoutmaster, redeems potential caricature, and Willis stands out as the cop, a melancholy and reflective figure of earned adult authority. “It takes time to figure things out,” he advises the boy, tenderly.

That might also be Anderson talking to himself. Moonrise Kingdom has a welcome new allowance of naturalness, particularly in landscape and weather. It is another of Anderson’s dollhouses, unavoidably, but with its windows open and without any shortage of fresh air in circulation. If Anderson now lacks the will to innovate, he has traded it for the real benefit of relaxing into vision refinement. Now we know for sure that he makes movies, even summer movies, the way he must.

Monticello Road is an odd part of Charlottesville. It was once literally the road to Jefferson’s house, but the construction of I-64 and Route 20 have truncated it to a short stretch that cuts through southern Charlottesville’s Belmont neighborhood. Though it’s only a mile in length, Monticello Road is a cross-section of residential homes, fancy restaurants, corner store bodegas, a gas station, an elementary school, and even a factory. This spring, photographer Peter Krebbs documented the people he met on his daily walks along the street in “The Monticello Road Project,” and the resulting photographs showed a broad range of individuals, a reminder of all of the different types of folk who make up a community.

This summer, Krebbs walked the road again, this time with 35 kids and a handful of mentors and volunteers as part of The Storyline Project. Now in its fourth year, Storyline is a collaboration between a half-dozen local organizations, led by The Bridge PAI and Piedmont Council for the Arts. For the project, a group of rising fourth through sixth graders from the Charlottesville Parks & Recreation summer camp program walked the length of the road over the course of four days, stopping along the way to draw what they observed and listen to presentations from those who live and work along the street.

The trip took them from Jefferson’s Monticello itself to places as varied as Lazy Daisy Ceramics, the Virginia Institute for the Blind, tapas restaurant Mas, and the so-called Belmont Mansion, the house that gave the neighborhood its name. The journey ended at the Free Speech Wall on the Mall, where the children spent the day drawing a chalk mural that represents their experiences.

Pete O’Shea, one of the landscape architects responsible for designing the Free Speech Wall, helped start the Storyline Project through his work with the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Preservation of Free Expression. “It’s my favorite project of any kind that I’ve ever worked on,” O’Shea said. “I’m used to finishing a project and just putting it away, but this has been a way of maintaining a relationship with the community.” With the program’s upcoming fifth year, O’Shea hopes that the project can be expanded, possibly by working with multiple groups, and offering the template to local schools as a teaching tool.

Local poet and teacher John Casteen IV has volunteered with Storyline since the beginning. “The group of campers for the first Storyline Project came from the Tonsler Park area,” said Casteen. “I grew up in that neighborhood, and I found it startling that The Bridge was making connections with neighborhoods like Tonsler, and with kids in places like Westhaven and Fifeville. In my life, I had not seen any outreach going on in those neighborhoods. When I talk to white, middle-class people in Charlottesville, they’re not even aware that places like the Southwood Trailer Park exist. To give the kids who are from those neighborhoods access to local history is to give them a way to make themselves politically aware.”

As the kids gathered around the Wall, with buckets of chalk at the ready, there was a wave of creative energy waiting to be unleashed. Rowdiness is the default setting at this age, but once the project was underway, they were fully committed to covering every inch of the Wall with chalk.

Some of the children had impressive technical skills, while others were just finding ways to move beyond basic stick-figure representation, and the chalk mural gave everyone a chance to try things and mess up without the pressure of permanence or the intimidation of working alone.

“If you ask a group of kids this age who’s good at drawing, they’ll all point to one or two kids,” O’Shea said. “But if you ask a class of kindergarteners who can draw, everybody’s going to raise their hand. We learn to draw before we can write, and it’s not until we get older that we start to become self-conscious about it. Adults have the hardest time with it, actually—by the time we’re adults we’ve already raised so many barriers for ourselves, and told ourselves what we are and aren’t good at.”

As the mural neared completion, it unmistakably resembled the work of children, and in fact it may already be washed away by rain by the time this column sees print. But the goal of the project is the process, not the results, and seeing the children work with each other and the volunteers seemed like a small success. At one point, a middle-aged woman held a tiny child aloft so he could trace the towering outline of a VIB employee who had stopped by to help out. Once the kids had their hands covered in chalk, several began painting it on their own faces as well —until a volunteer showed them a photo of what they looked like and they squealed in delight and horror. A hula-hoop materialized seemingly out of nowhere, and, most impressively, when a dozen pizzas arrived, the kids were too busy working on the mural to notice.

 “Trust Us with Your Life” 
Tuesday 9pm, ABC
This comedy series from the creators of “Whose Line is it Anyway?” brings back the televised improv concept, but with a celebrity talk-show spin. Each episode will feature a different famous person—Serena Williams, Jerry Springer, Florence Henderson, and Ricky Gervais among them—being interviewed by host Fred Willard, as he prompts them to recount key moments from their actual lives. A troupe of improvisers reenacts their stories through a variety of improv games and sketches. Anchoring the improv team are familiar faces Wayne Brady, Colin Mochrie, and Jonathan Mangum, who’ll be joined by rotating comics. Writing this prompted me to watch some “Jerry Springer” videos on YouTube, and his episode’s hair weave budget (for pulling) had better be massive.

“Political Animals” 
Sunday 10pm, USA
This new mini-series is easily one of the most anticipated TV events of the summer. Sigourney Weaver stars as a former First Lady and current Secretary of State potentially eyeing a run at the presidency. (Now where do you suppose they thought up that idea?) While the six-part series deals quite a bit with politics, and the media’s role in them (Carla Gugino plays a scoop-thirsty reporter), it is also very much a family drama: which makes sense, as it’s being executed/produced by the man who brought us “Brothers & Sisters.” Rounding out the cast are Ciaran Hinds as the oft-philandering former President, James Wolk (“Lone Star”) and Sebastian Stan (“Gossip Girl”) as their twin sons, and the great Ellen Burstyn as the family matriarch.

“Breaking Bad” 
Sunday 10pm, AMC
“Mad Men” and “Walking Dead” get all the headlines, but scores of critics—and viewers—consider “Breaking Bad” the best show on AMC. I’ve seen its most recent season referred to as one of the strongest seasons of any show in TV history, and a hard-to-please friend referred to it as a completely flawless string of episodes. So of course the show is coming to an end. Its fifth and final season bows this week, featuring 16 episodes split in half with a sizable break in between (like “Walking Dead” Season 2). The good news is that means we get a little longer to learn the final fate of Walter White, cancer-ridden high-school science teacher turned inadvertent drug kingpin (played to perfection by Bryan Cranston), and his tragic de facto protégé, Jesse Pinkman (the equally excellent Aaron Paul).