By wpengine December 5, 2002
Though we don’t necessarily think about it, where we live says a lot about us. Maybe you should think about that next time you look around your cluttered dorm room with the mold-attracting pizza boxes in the corner, huh? But if you want to feel better about your own abode, a surefire way to do so is to get a guided tour of the five eccentric living spaces depicted in Chris Smith’s Home Movie. An entertaining documentary on the absurd ways some people choose to live, Home Movie takes the audience inside a tree house on a remote Hawaiian island, a houseboat in Louisiana, a remote-controlled house of gimmicks, a converted missile silo, and the “cat house.” The film’s greatest strength is, of course, the strong personalities of these homes’ owners. As you’d expect of people who choose to live in such weird places, they are quirky, interesting, and in one case just plain creepy. Smith’s camera, however, is thankfully objective and non-judgmental, taking you on a tour without telling you what to think, and in the process revealing universal truths about the home that stretch far beyond these five houses and their inhabitants. The film starts with a promising teaser, introducing each of the homes in a quick vignette that provides just a hint of what’s to come. In Louisiana, “Wild Bill” lives on his houseboat, using a speedboat to commute to work at his father’s alligator farm every day. A glimpse into his life reveals a tranquil, happy existence spent eating crabs he catches off the side of his house, and his home is filled with everything that has sentimental value to him–including a butterfly ashtray which he once spent half an hour diving to retrieve after it fell overboard. Elsewhere, an eccentric old man has rigged his house with sci-fi gadgetry of the oddest sort. His living room rotates, his toilet is obscured by a flower planter which withdraws at the touch of a button, and a hand extending from the wall serves as his soap dish. He shares this unique home with a humanoid remote-controlled robot named Arok, his preserved pet dog (whom he calls his “son”) and a young wannabe actress whose relationship to him is indeterminate at best–he’s shown hypnotizing her and using her as his assistant in displays of his gadgetry. The whole situation is incredibly creepy, but the old guy does tell some entertaining anecdotes, like the time when he constructed a ski ramp off the roof of his house. The still photos of the younger man performing tricks coming down the slope are priceless. The film’s journey takes a more poignant turn to visit an old woman living out in the jungles of Hawaii in a giant tree house. She originally bought the land for her son, who subsequently died, and after his passing she moved there to fulfill his dream of living on the land. The house, with a tree trunk passing through the middle of it, and miles of wilderness surrounding it on all sides, is a peaceful and beautiful retreat from society. Another kind of retreat from society is represented by the “cat house,” whose owners have made everything else in their lives secondary to their pets. The entire house is a tribute to felines, from the woven collage of cats on the floor, to the bizarre “cat track” which runs overhead everywhere as a path for the couple’s pets. They even support themselves by selling cat art and photos. Exploring history and reinvention is a segment on an abandoned missile silo in Kansas, which has been converted by an enterprising family into a cozy home. When they bought the former government property, it was filthy and flooded with water–they transformed it from a site of destruction into their own private domain, with the majority of the home hidden underground. The living room resides in the former control room, and the missile silo space itself has become a workshop separated from the main house by a long tunnel. The most fascinating aspect of this segment is the awareness of the family about the place’s former purpose–they have even invited former missile engineers to revisit the site and tell them about its history. Chris Smith expertly weaves these five narratives through his hour-long documentary. Each home presented here is an absolute expression of individuality; the owners’ personalities seem to have leaked into the very fabric of the places, so that the homes express their owners’ quirks and charms beautifully. It’s a wonderful film, alternately funny and poignant, philosophical and silly. Going beyond just an examination of the home, it’s an exploration of humanity.Archived article by Ed Howard
By wpengine December 5, 2002
People often say that listening to Mozart 20 minutes before an exam can temporarily increase your IQ. Sadly, we don’t have any of Wolfie’s compositions playing on campus during study week, but we do have four productions guarenteed to raise your intelligence- or at least your spirits. So instead of taking the same old study break, think of heading over and spending some time with a miser, some dancers, an amazing family, or the 19th century British aristocracy. Scaling the Walls The Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts is closing out its fall season with this multimedia performance which combines dance, music, installation art and spoken word presentations. The evening is the fruit of a two year collaboration by three professors: Joyce Morgenroth, Associate Professor of Dance at Cornell, Prof. Patricia Alexander, Maryland Institute of Art, and Prof. Ann McCutchan, University of Wyoming. Accordingly, the program consists of three parts. The first is a dance choreographed by Morgenroth, which pays homage to Trisha Brown. Brown was one of the foremost choreographers for the prominent Judson Dance Theater. She later went on to develop a distinctive style which embraced the integration of spoken word into dance. The second piece is a “lyric essay” by Morgenroth, which segues from the invocation of Brown to an investigation of some ideas integral to her art, including the concepts of body, voice and musical life. Finally, the title piece by Alexander is a dance which makes use of a series of installed sculpted paper walls by Alexander. It also boasts music by composer Frank McCarty. Performances run December 5-7 at 7:30 p.m. in the Schwartz Center. Tickets are $4. A Christmas Carol “Marley was dead. Dead as a doornail. This must be understood, or nothing that follows will seem wondrous.” The Kitchen Theater takes on Dickens’s seasonal classic in an innovative new adaptation by Rachel Lampert. The production combines traditional action with life size (or ghost size) puppets and music. Performances are in the Kitchen’s small theater at 117 North Cayuga st. The Play runs December 7-8 at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Call 273-4497 for tickets. Throw Pitchfork The Kitchen is also offering the regional premiere of a one man play by Alexander Thomas. Thomas tells the story of his family from upstate New York to Hollywood. In the course of the evening, he slips into the characters of his younger self, his three brothers and his father, Willie, who grew up in ’30s Alabama. Thomas relates the common experiences as well as the differences of his father and himself and his brothers. Pitchfork runs December 5-22, Thursday- Saturday at 8:00 p.m. Call 273-4497 for tickets. The Importance of Being Earnest Gateway Theater at Risley stages a free (that’s right, free) production of Oscar Wilde’s second best play. As Wilde’s second best is better than 90% of the stuff out there, this is welcome news indeed (as is the price). The play is co-directed by Ann Zatsman ’05 and Elizabeth Bailey ’05, both of whom are benefiting from Gateway’s open direction policy. Any member of the company (which is open to all members of the Cornell Community) is welcome to submit a production proposal to the steering committee. If accepted, the applicant is then given funding and advice towards realizing the play. The advice comes in the form of Chris Jones, the technical director. Jones helps design the set and lighting, as well as offering general comments on the production. Earnest, another of Wilde’s witty (which is to say satisfyingly bitchy) looks at the British upper class, is a farce concerning the tangled web of lies Jack (Lee Strock ’06) and his friend Algy (Dave Schoonover ’05) weave in pursuit of, sometimes in flight from, Cecily (Britney Dann ’06) and Gwendolyn (Meri Carman ’06) under the scrutiny of the viper tounged Lady Bracknell (Laura Karlin ’05). Unlike Wilde’s best play, An Ideal Husband, Earnest boasts a genuine affection for its characters, who are mostly decent people in spite of their deceptions and artifice. Oscar’s acid wit is on display December 6-7 with performances at 8:00 p.m. and a 2:00 p.m. matinee on Saturday. Archived article by Erica Stein