The Rice Thresher, Vol. 91, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, September 26, 2003 Page: 9 of 20
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THE RICE THRESHER ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2003
THE
THRESHER'S
RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR EVENTS AROUND
HOUSTON THROUGH
OCT. 2, 2003.
picks
friday and
Saturday
HIT ME BABY,
ONE MORE TIME
See the Rice Players fall
production of And Baby
Makes Seven, a play
about hypothetical
infanticide from the
playwright of The
Baltimore Waltz.
Friday and Saturday
at 8 p.m.
Call (713) 348-PLAY
for tickets.
Visit http://
www.ruf.rice.edu/
~players/index.shtml
for more information.
friday and
Saturday
AT LEAST YOUR
MOTHER'S NOT
JOAN CRAWFORD
Kathleen Turner plays a
mother of five in Sofia
Coppola's debut feature,
The Virgin Suicides
(1999), based on the
novel by Pulitzer-Prize
winning author Jeffrey
Eugenides. See it this
week at River Oaks.
Friday and Saturday
at Midnight.
The River Oaks
2009 West Gray
Tickets are $8.
ongoing
HERE'S TO YOU
MRS. ROBINSON
Come see rock 'n' roll
housewife Jerry Hall as the
iconic Mrs. Robinson in
the stage play of the
classic film. The
Graduate.
Sponsored by
Broadway in Houston,
Hobby Center for the
Performing Arts, 800
Bagby St., 8 p.m.
Call (713) 622-SH0W for
tickets and show times.
Tickets range from
$20-47.
PARANOID ASDROll)
Installation has elements of childhood, mass culture
Ian Garrett
THRESHER STAFF
Somewhere between Robert
Raushenburg, Ed Kienholz and
your backyard, you'll find Fort Dis-
comfort.
'the re-creation of
fort discomfort'
Jesse Bercowetz, Matt Bua
Rating: ***** (out of five)
Through Oct. 26
at the Rice Gallery
In this site-specific work, artists
Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua have
collaborated on the creation now
standing guard in the Rice Univer-
sity Art Gallery in Sewall Hall. Ad-
vertised during its construction as
an "excuse to build" and employing
the help of a number of Rice stu-
dents to paint, tape, light and "pro-
cess" countless found objects, Fort
Discomfort takes many people's trash
and not only creates treasure but
addresses social ideas.
The artists work out of New York
City on both solo projects and col-
laborations. For all their projects,
they take discarded items and "pro-
cess" them into large works of art.
Previous work includes participation
in MIR 2at Smack Mellon Studios in
Brooklyn, N.Y., and Clubhouse at
Socrates Sculpture Park on Long
Island.
These collaborative construc-
tions, along with conceptual projects
like Drawing Truck (basically a U-
Haul trailer attached to a pen in a
variety of inventive ways, which was
shown at The Drawing Center in
New York), reflect both a youthful
playfulness and serious reflection
on societal ideas.
THE IANGUAGE BARRIER
This piece is no exception, for it
turns the gallery walls into the mani-
festation of everything your child-
hood fort could be and more.
Inside the gallery a carrot chain-
gun greets visitors as they enter the
fort through the guillotine gate. Each
of the rooms is assigned to a type of
explorer who could live in the fort.
The music room is surrounded by
chicken wire and has guitars, re-
cording equipment and other effects
hanging below a translucent plastic
orange roof. Interesting in light of
recent history — Branch Davidian
cult leader David Koresh originally
desired to be a rock star — it dis-
turbs as it engages.
To the right is the kitchen/labo-
ratory, where hanging lights and
bottles combine with edible and in-
edible items in a tower of flashing
lights recycled from the artistic duo's
MIR 2 contribution. Outside this
room are a sink and garbage dis-
posal fountain, piped with PVC pipe
and putty. To the left are the world
explorer's room, the classroom, the
scientist's room, and the philo-
sopher's room.
This is a piece
that yearns for
interaction.
The explorer's room is lined with
trophies from around the globe, and
a long hall is lit with trinket trea-
sures and Halloween masks. The
classroom, though, is for the
most dedicated of frontiersmen:
Through a large opening in the cor-
ner of the fort, one can first enter the
preparedness room and then go
through the fan door to the pews of
the television classroom.
'
JOANNA MUNDY/THRESHER
Gallery Manager Jaye Anderton explains the alchemist's lab in The Re-
creation of Fort Discomfort at the Rice Gallery opening on Sept. 18.
Though entitled The Recreation
of Fort Discomfort, the fort is a grt t
deal of fun. All its parts are found
items that have been "processed."
The processing involves painting,
rewiring, and other forms of ma-
nipulation to alter preexisting items.
It is not just a bevy of someone's
trash thrown together, but a con-
scious, intelligent assemblage, even
if appearances suggest otherwise.
The concept of "discomfort" enters
the installation because the fort was
created in response to the artists'
sense of unease. The fort as an out-
post speaks to ideas of avant-garde,
the frontier, facing a boundary. This
See HIDEOUT, Page 12
Studying the power of non-verbal communication
Raj VVahi
THRESHER STAFF
Lost in Translation is the kind of
movie that deseives to be perfect. Its
central story is a sweet,
perceptive meditation on human com-
panionship that refuses to cheapen
itself with gratuitous sex scenes or an
unconvincing happy ending.
Most in
translation'
in theaters
Rating: ****
(out of five)
That's what makes it so disap-
pointing when writer-director Sofia
Coppola punctuates this sincere, lyri-
cal story with unwanted "humorous"
scenes of often-astonishing mean-
ness. The film is still one of the best
of the year, but if Coppola had exer-
cised more self-restraint she could
have made one of the best ever, and
that's a superlative I rarely use.
Bob (Bill Murray) and Charlotte
(Scarlett Johansson, Ghost World)
are two jet-lagged, lonely travelers
who meet by chance while spending
a few days in Tokyo. Bob, a washed-
up movie star who rarely sees his
wife and kids, is in Tokyo to make a
quick $2 million
shooting a whiskey
commercial. Char-
lotte is there with
her husband John
(Giovanni Ribisi,
Boiler Room), a
rock-band photog-
rapher who leaves
his wife alone at the
hotel while he rubs
elbows with stars
and flirts with a va-
pid Hollywood star-
COURTESY FOCUS FEATURES
Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) and Bob (Bill Murray) strike up a friendship based on their mutual loneliness in Tokyo.
let (a dead-on Anna Faris, from The
Hot Chick).
Wired, bored, and desperate to
escape the vacuous outside world,
Bob and Charlotte start to develop a
friendship. Instead of throwing them
together within an overly dramatic
introduction, though, Coppola
wisely lets them take their time ap-
proaching each other. They cross
paths several times, exchanging little
more than glances and shy smiles as
it gradually dawns on them that they
might be able to have an inter-
esting — perhaps even reward-
ing — conversation.
When they finally do talk to each
other, they communicate not in
elegant, lengthy sentences but in awk-
ward, elliptical approximations of their
thoughts and feelings. Mostly they
talk about the concrete details of their
lives, revealing that they both are un-
happy in their marriages. Bob reflects
with melancholy humor on his sta-
tus as a has-been, and Charlotte, a
recent college graduate, admits that
she doesn't know what she wants to
do with her life.
Tentative touches
and gazes that say
the things
language cannot.
All of this sounds fairly ordinary,
yet the conversation is remarkable
because Bob and Charlotte say so
much to each other, with so much
richness and nuance, through a vari-
ety of nonverbal cues, such as when
Bob touches Charlotte's foot with an
intriguing mix of low-key flirtation and
fatherly protectiveness. This. I think,
is the part of the movie that rings
truest—Coppola recognizes that ver-
bal communication is often sloppy and
imperfect, and that the most touching
details of human interaction are the
smiles, tentative touches and gazes
that say the things language cannot.
The actors know this too. and
they're up to the task. Murray, bet-
ter known for his deadpan humor
than his dramatic acting (though
he's actually good at both), is excel-
lent as a man whose perpetually
bemused expression conceals a sur-
prising vulnerability, particularly
evident during a long-distance call
to his fmstrated wife The mixture
See Ml RRAY. Pact' 12
•i!
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Berenson, Mark. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 91, No. 6, Ed. 1 Friday, September 26, 2003, newspaper, September 26, 2003; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth398429/m1/9/: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.