A movie’s ending is not always its most important part. This is true not just in a cliché, journey-not-the-destination sort of way, but also in the way movies are consumed and the way they’re remembered. For every final scene that elevates a movie to jaw-dropping status — “Se7en,” say, or… Read more »

Smart cinema is an admirable endeavor. It’s an idea that pervades more than just plot — there are plenty of cinematography and production tricks that, when carefully considered, can complement or even add to whatever surface material is on screen, adding a layer of complexity that begs to be sussed… Read more »

“You would be too young to remember this,” Dan Woll says, “but there was a black and white TV show in the late ‘60s called ‘The Fugitive.’” Woll is describing a primary reference point for the style of Death on Cache Lake, the new book he co-authored with the late… Read more »

One gets the feeling that The Shins were trying for a grand statement on their latest album, Port of Morrow. From the album’s arc — morose to uplifted and back again — to the coy title that seems right at home on a list of euphemisms with “the great beyond”… Read more »

A few weeks ago, in February of this year, Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich said, of President Barrack Obama, “The president wants to unilaterally weaken the United States.” He continued, speaking to a group of students at Oral Roberts University, “We are in a world that is very dangerous. And… Read more »

Imagine, for a moment, that the Academy Awards didn’t exist. And imagine, though this might be even more of a stretch, that no other awards show — real or imagined — popped up to fill what would admittedly be a gaping void in the entertainment capitalist complex. No premier red… Read more »

Lights up and zoom in on our host, decked out in D.C. apparel. He’s squinting as if he’s slightly in pain, as if he knows what’s coming isn’t for his own good, the good of the studio audience or even the sparse population watching at home. And he’s right. When… Read more »

When Tiffany Thom Kenney, marketing director at Madison Magazine, left Las Vegas in 2006, she brought something back with her. Rather than, say, gambling debt, or a weird rash, or a diamond ring of unknown origin, Kenney carried an idea back to the capital city of America’s Dairyland, one that… Read more »

There’s something amusingly obscure about a roomful of prints by Mexican artists mostly done in the first half of the 20th century. It’s a collection that sounds like it belongs in a long, dry conversation with an uncle who heads up an independent tax firm but really had a passion… Read more »

To view the formatted version of this page, go to http://issuu.com/badgerherald/docs/thestudyguidefall2011/6. I’m hustling, but I can’t quite catch up to Jeremy Ryan. I’ve arrived early to his suggested meeting place before our interview, the first floor of Capitol Rotunda, next to the Constitution. But he’s on the move, rolling counterclockwise… Read more »

One minute you’re staring at a blank wall. The next you’re ant-sized, looking up at flowers that seem to loom feet above your head, trying to brush away blades of grass that are dangerously close to your face. Of course, your hands go through the blades; they hit only air,… Read more »

Imagine being handed a magazine already open to the best, most interesting page. Anyone’s interest would be immediately engaged, piqued, and that person would probably be tempted to give the rest of the magazine a shot. There might even be some residual nostalgia as the rest of the pages flipped… Read more »

The best Christmas movie of our generation was made by two Jewish guys in 1994 and is centered around a different holiday. It was reviled by critics and is often named as a blemish on the respective resumes of its cast. It cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $30 million… Read more »

Myles McNutt won’t say exactly when “The Office” began to go downhill. He won’t express, as some might, the idea that a show shot in semi-documentary style may be doomed by its own form the longer it drags on. He won’t circle a date in July 2010 when Steve Carrell… Read more »

Taken as a pair, the narration over the opening sequences of “Trainspotting” and the digital message that begins the second half of Radiohead’s seminal album OK Computer are eerily similar. In the movie, the main character, Renton (Ewan McGregor, “Perfect Sense”), describes a well-adjusted life over the strains of Iggy Pop.… Read more »

Brendan Scanlon sits on a striped couch in a plaid shirt that is stained with orange paint. He is holding rolling paper; an ice cream pint container is balanced in his lap. One hand dips into the container and comes out with a short handful which he sprinkles into the… Read more »

Here’s a joke Bill Burr tells. He’s walking around at a street fair with his girlfriend. He hates street fairs; he thinks they’re stupid, just like everything else she wants to do. “Typical girlfriend idea,” he says on the YouTube clip. “It sucks and it’s gonna take all Saturday.” He’s… Read more »

You’re probably going to Freakfest this weekend. And, as such, you’re probably wondering: Should I go to All Time Low and enjoy their music, act reasonably throughout the concert and just generally enjoy myself? Or, should I go to All Time Low and dance in a manner inconsistent with human… Read more »

In his famous painting “Self Portrait 1907,” Pablo Picasso stares intensely out of the canvas at the viewer. Or one of his eyes does, anyway. The other is shades lighter and less filled in, imbuing the Spanish artist with an unfocused air, like a man who’s just removed his glasses… Read more »

There’s no reason that a logical flaw should be central to an evaluation of a movie about shape-shifting aliens in Antarctica. It’s a premise so absurd that stepping into the theater signals a sort of implicit contract between viewer and filmmakers to suspend disbelief for an hour and a half… Read more »

The most recent episode of South Park, “Ass Burgers,” and its preceding episode of last spring, “You’re Getting Old,” call for a little armchair psychology. What caused South Park creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone to set up, and then immediately destroy, a new direction for the show? Why did… Read more »

The restaurant business is said to be brutal. Capicola-thin margins, constantly changing trends and fickle, fickle customers make the prospect of owning an eatery a tough one to stomach, so to speak. This must be especially true in Madison, a town where restaurants crowd every corner and square, where even… Read more »

Unrest and discomfort go hand in hand. The former is an intermediate state, a feeling of flux that precludes normal behavior. The latter can be a result of unrest — the pain caused by turmoil or the uneasy feeling that creeps up in an unfamiliar situation. The two, when paired… Read more »

Even as I write this on a Thursday afternoon, I realize that there’s a rather large chance that I’m going to look absolutely silly when this page is printed tomorrow morning. I’m well aware of the fact that the words I’m about to put down on this page could easily… Read more »

What does one call a boy raised in tough neighborhoods by an unstable family who now preaches obedience to the law and service to the community above all else? What does one call a high school dropout who now, at age 22, has aspirations of attending school for electric and… Read more »

Back in March, when the only way you could avoid jokes about warlocks, tiger blood and F-18s was to hole yourself up in your Beverly Hills mansion for 36 hours with a couple of well-paid porn stars and enough cocaine to make Pablo Escobar blush, Newsweek published an essay by… Read more »

Let’s first be clear about one thing: chillwave — at least in its musical construction — is not a new invention. The futuristic-sounding effects, the vocals on top of keyboard on top of keyboard on top of drum machine composition and the constant modulation between major and minor keys and… Read more »

Around any corner in the brand new HotelRED, there lies an equal chance of seeing traditional painted drywall as there is rough, gray concrete, complete with indentations where structural beams run through. In another context, exposed concrete walls might make an interior look hastily put together, under-planned or unfinished.  HotelRED… Read more »

There’s a fine line between jingoism and national pride, just as there’s a fine line between cynicism and seeing things for how they really are. America is comfortably wealthy, yes, and has a system of government that generally responds to the voice of its people. But is it also, in… Read more »

Sometimes, when you stop to think about it, the content of a Beastie Boys album is a little perplexing. On the one hand, it’s totally understandable that the three emcees from New York City would use the unique nature of their group as a selling point. You would expect some… Read more »

In his 2009 book “Eating the Dinosaur,” cultural commentator Chuck Klosterman makes the following claim as an apologetic segue into a rant about sitcom laugh tracks: “There’s one kind of writing that’s always easy: picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest… Read more »

Abe Sauer sees a disconnect between the press and the people, and it’s shaped like an immaculately-groomed, silver-haired TV icon. Journalists today, he says, “are more of the upper middle class than they are of anything else,” and it’s causing large swaths of the country not to listen to them.… Read more »

A sequel, more than any other type of movie — remakes, adaptations, spin-offs, original fare, even prequels — has an obligation to its audience to achieve coherence with outside material, namely its predecessor. Most basically, the plot should follow from one movie to the next. This means location, names and… Read more »

“Yogi Bear” is a Jellystone epoch in two acts. The first is largely expositional. Viewers quickly meet the core of live action characters, including the dedicated yet socially awkward Head Ranger Smith (Tom Cavanagh of TV’s “Royal Pains”), his love interest Rachel (Anna Faris, “Take Me Home Tonight”) and his… Read more »

Recently, writer Adrien Chen released an article about a fringe astronomy journal that led with the sentence, “There’s a way in which science can be viewed as the business of publishing very serious and boring magazines.” And there’s more than a kernel of truth to that thought. Though cutting edge… Read more »

So far in writing this column, I’ve kept one particular aspect of movie-watching constant through the chick flicks and horror films, the big-budget action adventures, the family feel-goods and the weird quasi-documentaries (looking at you, “I’m Still Here”). See, every week for the past year I’ve chosen a couple DVDs… Read more »

The birds chirp hesitantly in the waning afternoon sun, interrupted at 15 minute intervals by a pastoral chiming from the bell tower of a nearby church. They’ve gathered in one of the trees at the top of the Sixth Avenue hill that cuts straight through the heart of New Glarus.… Read more »

Let me try to describe the sound of Zach Galifianakis masturbating. It starts with an intake of air. One breath, slightly out of place, a little bit sudden. Then a soft, rhythmic beat slowly builds speed, only to be interrupted by Robert Downey Jr. waking up in the passenger seat… Read more »

It might not be fair to pick on the performance of Meaghan Martin (formerly of the TV show “10 Things I Hate About You”) in “Mean Girls 2.” After all, she’s not given much to work with. The directing and production are average assembly-line-type efforts, the supporting cast is mediocre… Read more »

During the first two weeks of December 2010, the Overture Center for the Arts’ future hung in the balance, contingent on two groups striking a deal that would address the performance art venue’s debt, ownership, operation and well-being of employees. At least three marathon negotiation sessions between the board of… Read more »

For better or worse, all people change over time. First dates and break-ups, new homes and old friends, transcendent professors and speeding tickets, road trips and concerts, missed opportunities and second chances: There are few events in life that happen without influencing the participants. There’s just no way around it; we’re… Read more »

When the original “Shrek” came out way, way back in 2001, there was a minor outcry among some of the more family-oriented and traditionalist outlets about the content of the computer-generated ogre’s tale. It seemed the original, which was a fleshed-out version of William Steig’s children’s book of the same… Read more »

Opening a restaurant isn’t easy, and it’s not cheap. It can’t be rushed, there’s a risk of failure and deciding what to put on the menu is only a small fraction of the overall process. Still, ask Tim and Elizabeth Dahl, the husband and wife team behind Nostrano, a new… Read more »

Remember when Paris Hilton was spotted walking around Los Angeles with a grey-bearded, orange-robed monk? And it hit the tabloids, and the talk-show hosts worked it into their monologues, and for a few seconds everyone was wondering just what in the name of the Dali Lama was going on? At… Read more »

Ke$ha is that book-smart pretty girl who decides halfway through her sophomore year that, hey, schoolwork is fine and all, but it’s not really doing much in the way of actual, you know, happiness or personal relationships. So she sets her chemistry textbook on her alphabetized bookshelf, pulls her hair… Read more »

Full disclosure No. 1: I worked for Insomnia Cookies for a semester during my freshman year as a student marketing representative. The other day on Bedford Street, I noticed something I never had before. There’s a parking lot that houses food-vendor carts that are a mainstay on Library Mall by… Read more »

Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:”Table Normal”; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:”“; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:”Times New Roman”; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Antichrist: four stars; Scott Pilgrim four stars our of fiveThere are a few meanings of the word focus.… Read more »

I’ve never seen an episode of “Sex and the City.” I watched the first “Sex and the City” movie from a dorm room futon, surrounded by furry pink and yellow pillows while one of the room’s occupants was back in her hometown for the weekend. I’m a little fuzzy on… Read more »

Emily Mills is talking with her hands. “I took tons of pictures from the lead up to the Iraq war; all this great graffiti was going up. There was one on the corner of, I think, Lake Street and State. Where the Walgreens is. That wall just had a huge… Read more »

Leaves of Grass” opens on a black screen. The only action is the voice of Bill Kincaid (Edward Norton, “Stone”), a professor of classical philosophy at Brown University. Suddenly, the picture comes into focus and the audience is sitting in his lecture, eyes wandering the classroom, listening to Bill explain… Read more »

If “Get Him to the Greek” and “Iron Man 2” share a message, it’s this: “Forget what you’ve heard. Drugs save lives.” If there’s a second message in common, though, it’s: “But, wait, man, just so you know, there might be a couple hard days in there as you’re turning… Read more »

“Whether it’s Jimmy John’s or Subway or Blimpie, there’s not a whole lot of secrets in the sandwich segment. It’s lunch meat put on bread.” -Michael Liautaud, interview with Franchise Times Magazine, September 2006. What’s the secret to sub-shop success? A low, white building sits between the Aberdeen and the… Read more »

Prince of Persia: 3 stars; Letters to Juliet: 4 stars out of five One gets the feeling while watching “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” that producers Walt Disney Pictures and Jerry Bruckheimer Films were trying to set up a worthy successor to their “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise.… Read more »

So, it’s the school year again. There’s no use denying it; the start of classes is as inevitable as Comedy Central picking up “Vampires Suck” in six months and then playing it bookended with “Just Friends” and “Van Wilder: Freshman Year” every weekend until the London Olympics. But cheer up!… Read more »

There’s a theory about the reason people act the way they do. There’d be no love, no war, no meaningful emotion, says this theory, without a certain looming inevitability that hangs above our existence. All living things eventually die — but part of what distinguishes humans is that they’re fully… Read more »

I played in a kickball tournament this weekend, because I apparently miss more about my elementary school years than I’d probably like to admit. It was a pretty great day for kickball — warm and clear, and the ground at Vilas Park was rock hard, which is perfect for complaining… Read more »

Subtlety can be a curse. There’s something to be said for not tipping your hand, for playing it close to the vest, for not counting your money when you’re at the table. After all, you can’t have a reveal without first having deception and illusion. But when a filmmaker’s need… Read more »

You’ve probably heard about “Avatar’s” budget. Though no official figures have been released, there was speculation leading up to the film’s December release date that production costs had reached $200, even $300 million. In early November, The New York Times published an article speculating that all told, the total financial… Read more »

Where there are wild things, there will be suspense. This week’s column focuses on a pair of movies about two sets of beastly, fearsome, bickering beings and how they deal with the introduction of a sole unexpected alpha-visitor into their tight-woven clan. However, the nature of that visitor varies dramatically.… Read more »

There’s nothing more frustrating than wasted potential. There are plenty of mediocre acts out there in the music scene; plenty of crappy, single driven derivates content to take their cut of album royalties and make money opening for Ludacris or Nickelback. So when something new comes around — a sound… Read more »

The pursuit of love isn’t always like a romantic comedy. Sometimes it’s a little more tragic. Occasionally, it’s like sticking your hand in a ceiling fan, or an itch on that part of your back you can’t quite reach or a sucker-punch that nicks your ribcage and causes internal bleeding.… Read more »

Sometimes, it’s better not to dig too deep. Take Jeff Dunham, for example. I won’t argue one way or the other on whether the man is funny or not. Either you’re into racist, stale puppet-ventriloquist humor or you aren’t. But with Dunham, what you see is what you get. There’s… Read more »

Everyone’s experienced the dilemma. You’re standing at a redbox at 10:30 on a Wednesday night — maybe by yourself, maybe with a friend — and you’ve narrowed it down to two of that week’s new releases: “District 9” and “Taking Woodstock.” It’s hard to know how to even compare… Read more »

It’s a good thing no one’s listening to Michael Moore anymore. Not because his ideas are dangerous or incendiary, but because he’s run out of things to say. The problems with his tepid new effort are manifold, but the biggest are its complete lack of relevant content and its failure… Read more »

Humankind really sucks sometimes. We fight massive wars, we created global warming and we’re spiteful, hateful, murderous, deceitful and thieving. You can add another item to that list after seeing “The Cove,” where, in a secluded lagoon near a Japanese fishing town, over 23,000 smart (their intelligence is supposedly on… Read more »