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The Art in the Vault

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So Dane Cook tells me that “Any guy here, more than sex — if they had the choice between sex and this one other thing — any guy here would rather be part of a heist.” To be honest, I would too: there’s something that’s oh-so-thrilling about the vault. It’s that moment of awe when the composite-steel doors swing open and the titanium bolts unlock. You know: it’s the sexiness of precision machines. At this moment, even veteran thieves (imagine: George Clooney as Danny Ocean) stand for a second in silence in front of their prize.

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D.J. Yahel: Music A Letdown, Party A Blast

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Attending D.J. Yahel’s performance at Barton Hall last Thursday was a strange combination of two groups of people: Those who were there for the rave and those who weren’t.
On the dance floor, it felt exactly like a rave — squished in the middle of 20 Jewish frat guys yelling “L’chaim!” (really?) and tossing their brothers into the air to crowd surf, it felt like Barton could have been some crazy Israeli dance club. Yahel’s beats certainly contributed — he played more club than trance, and strategically slipped in some Middle Eastern tracks into the mix. The eerie sounds of hymn-singing wafted over the thump of the bass and caused the eruption of full-on mosh pit behavior.

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'I Know Kung-Faux'

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To make a vast generalization, American movies are usually Cinderella stories. They feature an underdog achieving unexpected success and/or finding their dreams. (Read: Bring It On, The Matrix, Stomp the Yard, etc.) The rags-to-riches theme is something that Hollywood never tires of rehashing. The Forbidden Kingdom is a typical underdog movie (complete with self-improvement montages) clothed in a pastiche of Chinese culture. It’s a film that reads like a hundred other movies and is more interested in signaling that it’s a kung-fu film than in actually being one. The Forbidden Kingdom, starring Jet Li and Jackie Chan (its biggest claim to fame), is pretty simple: yellow on the outside, white on the inside.

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Feminism Goes Full Frontal

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A recent JuicyCampus post is titled “I am so over the feminist label.” The offended poster goes on to speak about what she feels are her rights as a woman — job opportunities, equality and success, all while still being attractive to men — and how she is angry that for this she is constantly being labeled a “feminist.” She writes, “why do i hear a lot of guys still calling women feminists just because they want to be a doctor or lawyer or whatevs. we have ambitions just like you guys!”

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New Pornographers and Okkervil: A Class Act

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I’ve got it pretty bad for Neko Case. It’s something about that voice, that red hair. She gets up on stage, looking kind of grungy, kind of beautiful, and tells us with that rounded voice of hers that she’s sorry — she’s a little sick. She makes jokes about not being able to hit the high notes. She then sings “Unguided” like there’s nothing more important in the world. And suddenly, we’re all on our feet — in our skinny jeans and hipster Urban Outfitters hoodies — clapping and dancing in awkward State Theatre chairs. And to think we were moved by the openers!

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Bloody, Sexy, Surprising

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The opening scene of Street Kings tells us exactly what the next two hours are going to be like. Keanu Reeves, a little bit gone to seed, wakes up grasping for his gun. He goes to the bathroom, pukes in the toilet, cleans his loaded handgun and steps out of his motel-ish apartment. We then realize it’s not morning — it’s sunset. Reeves, playing moral yet blindly violent cop, Tom Ludlow, buys exclusively airplane serving-sized vodka as his beverage of choice and drinks them in his pimped-out ride. For an L.A.P.D. bad boy, the work day has just begun.

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Yes, Your Corpus is Exquisite

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At museums, we are used to only involving our eyes and our feet. We walk from painting to photograph, passively keeping art at a distance; we keep our arms folded, casually lingering at each work long enough to seem like we really see it. In this way, our bodies are safe from the art: we see photographs, figures and realizations of others, while we remain voyeurs only. Exquisite Corpus: Interacting with the Fragmented Body, however, an exhibition by the History Art Majors’ Society (HAMS) which opened at the Johnson on Saturday, tries to explore definitions of the body beyond the breadth of other collections. In its exploration of the body through art, Exquisite Corpus seeks to pull us, the visitors, from our bleary non-involvement — that usual mindless walk.

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Test Spin: Aesop Rock

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Aesop Rock’s drawling lyrics are born from a wide and esoteric knowledge. The Long Island-born MC does not stop to linger over chains, ass, cars or drugs; instead his songs speak to a stranger, more prolific lifestyle. It is these lyrics that gave Aesop his fans; yet it’s these same lines that continue to keep him underground. In “Citronella,” the first verse finishes rife with references to literature, film and history: “Forty torched orchids and citronella for Algernon, don and vagabond alike repent, this shit should have gone ’beta burns babylon, the end!’” Though we may be lost in Aesop’s verbosity, his hooks are bumping and may eventually be his bridge to the mainstream.

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Test Spin: Against Me

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New Wave is a voracious, lyrical homage to selling out. While everyone seemed to understand the commercial motivation for Kanye West’s jump to the mainstream, Against Me’s punk fans do not have the same sympathy. However, New Wave is inspired by a growing paradox that singer Tom Gable touches on in his still-angry tracks: how to stay rebel when “punk” is the new establishment? His harsh voice, criticizing the big labels and his anti-establishment peers in “Up The Cuts,” sings, “All the punks still singing the same song/are you restless like me?”