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(04/25/13 5:23pm)
Jordan Witzigreuter, known on the music scene as The Ready Set, gave this year’s BearStock an energetic opening with his dance-able, alternative-pop music. Before the show, The Ready Set sat down with representatives from Mercer’s media outlets, including Mercer 99 and the Cluster. This is the exchange between The Ready Set and the Cluster.
Cluster: What’s coming up next for you? Any tours, any albums?
Jordan: Yeah. We’re finishing this month and a half of just college shows, playing at tons of different colleges, and then, pretty much in between every show, I’m flying back to LA, working on an album and then finishing up the entire thing in May, so that’s pretty much done. And then we have a couple other things coming up too, as far as new music releases. Not really sure for touring yet, but there’s gonna be something, probably at the end of summer, and fall and winter and all that.
C: I was wondering; you said you’ve been playing a couple colleges lately—you’ve got a college tour going on. Do you find anything different about playing for a college scene rather than just an overall concert venue, or is it basically the same?
J: I think with college shows you kind of get a lot of passerby and people who aren’t necessarily there for the show so much as they’re there to see something happen, so that’s pretty cool. I think it kind of exposes you to a lot of people who might not otherwise have ever heard of you, and that’s definitely cool. But they’re seriously all completely different things. Like, sometimes we’ll do them and there will be just a couple hundred people, and then other times there will be like 5,000 people. You never know what you’re going to get into. It’s kind of a thrill.
C: You’ve been saying “we” a lot in your interview. The Ready Set is you and the backup band that travels with you. Can you tell us a bit about who you play with—who makes up the band—and what that dynamic is like?
J: The Ready Set is pretty much just me, but when we tour it’s a band. So I’ve been able to have it be a thing where it’s just my friends who come out with me, so it’s not random-awkward-guy tryouts for a position. It keeps it really consistent, the guys I’ve had with me I’ve had for a few years now, so it feels more like a band than anything; I guess that’s why I tend to say “we.” We have a guitar player named Deryck, a drummer named Travis and a bass player named Mike, and it’s pretty much a completely different vibe than what I do in the studio. It definitely becomes more of a rock thing—I guess it shows—than pop, really, which is kind of what I always wanted to do. I never wanted to put on a pop show; I guess I wanted it to be more energetic than that.
C: How did these guys come together? You said you kind of wanted it to be friends rather than strangers.
J: I’ve had a lot of different changes and different setups with the band, but throughout touring over the past few years I’ve been able to pick people from other bands who maybe stopped touring or stopped being as active, so I could just kind of be like, ‘Hey, do you want to come on the road with me and just have a good time?’ And it kind of works out. I’ve known everyone for a really long time, so it’s just a really cool, laid-back environment.
C: I’m curious about your new album. How does it stand out from the albums you’ve put out before? Are you exploring anything new? Has there been a development in your sound?
J: Definitely. I’m really excited; I feel like it’s the first chance I’ve really had to kind of do exactly, 100 percent what I want. I’ve had a lot of time to do it. I’ve been writing it for over two years, honestly—like, ever since I put out the last album I’ve been writing—so I’ve got over 70 songs and I really only like maybe six or seven of them. Writing that many songs and just going through that process so many times kind of made me figure out exactly what I want it to be like. It’s going to be a lot less electronic and a lot—I dunno—a lot less dance-y. I’m going to do a lot more tracking, with real drums and real pianos. It’s going to be a lot more natural, and I’m excited about that.
C: I know it’s hard to say, as an artist, that you ever listen to anything recreationally, because you’re probably always getting some kind of influence and thinking about how it can apply to your music. But what do you like to just listen to?
J: I’m kind of all over the place with that. I grew up listening to metal bands, punk bands and stuff like that. I guess some of that sort of stuff, and like I was saying earlier, I like to find random new things. I like to look on iTunes before flights and download albums and listen to everything I possibly can. I feel like there are certain types of music that when I start to listen to it, I start to apply it too much to what I’m doing. If I listen to the radio, there’s always that pressure of, ‘Oh, this is what big songs are like, maybe I should try to do that,’ and I think that’s a bad way to think, really. So I just try to draw influences from everything. That’s the most relaxing thing: just getting completely out of my world of writing in this style and get into other stuff for a little bit. So pretty much everything that’s not what I’m doing is what I like to listen to.
C: Were you listening to anything today before you came here?
J: Today, what have I been listening to? Nothing today, but recently I’ve been listening to a band called the xx a lot.
Look for the upcoming album release this fall, and check out The Ready Set at thereadyset.com. For the full interview, visit the Mercer 99 YouTube page.
(04/25/13 5:23pm)
I really wanted to like “42”. The story of Jackie Robinson is a truly inspiring one about the fight against racism, a pivotal moment in sports history. Also, because parts of the movie were filmed in Macon, I felt obligated to like it out of loyalty.
On a surface level, I did enjoy the movie—but only as a movie. As a biopic, as a critique of the racist attitudes that existed then and persist now, and as a historically accurate piece, the movie fell far short of what it could have been.
The acting of the movie was fairly good throughout. The film was dominated by two strong performances: Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey, the team executive for the Brooklyn Dodgers; and Chadwick Boseman, who took the titular role as Jackie Robinson. Ford’s role carried the film as the driving force behind Robinson’s career in the major leagues, to the point where his role overshadowed Boseman’s Robinson. This isn’t to say that Boseman didn’t do a good job at channeling Robinson’s feats of restraint in the midst of heavy verbal and cultural abuse, but the part he was given did not give Boseman very much to work with. This leads into my biggest critique of the film: the writing failed the epic promise made by the legend it sought to capture.
Brian Helgeland’s script was heavy-handed and tried too hard to imbue every scene with a deep, gripping significance. Some of the scenes were actually very good: I would like to cite the scene in which Robinson finds out local men in the town he’s staying in intend to jump him, or the scene in which Rickey shows one of the other Dodgers the folders full of threatening letters that Robinson had received since he had started playing on white teams. Honestly, though, Helgeland tried too hard, and the attempt to make every scene epic made quite a few of the grand speeches feel thin and weak. There was very little levity in the movie. Harrison Ford delivered quite a few funny lines in Rickey’s warm growl, and there is one awkwardly humorous moment when one of the other Dodgers asks Robinson why he won’t shower with the rest of the team, but even those moments feel as if they are supposed to have some kind of great weight behind them. The audience just feels exhausted.
Most of the characters—including, to a degree, Robinson himself—were not very well developed. Racists were all unintelligent and had Southern accents, and none of Jackie’s teammates played enough of a role in the movie for the audience to even tell the individual players apart. You would think that if the movie was going to spend much of its time emphasizing how Rickey stood behind Robinson, it would also spend time highlighting the team that came to accept and support Robinson as well. This is not the case; teammates either do not change their attitudes toward Robinson or do abruptly. Also, the film attempted to incorporate into the film a young Ed Charles, who—as the concluding montage will inform the viewer—went on to win the World Series with the New York Mets. This was not well developed at all, and Charles’s character became a vehicle for explaining the rules of baseball in an over-the-top, Leave-it-to-Beaver delivery.
What troubled me most, though, was the film’s handling of racism. For one, as previously noted, it portrayed all of the people who were against Robinson’s joining white teams as snide antagonists, frowning bystanders or blatantly ignorant meatheads with Southern accents. This is an oversimplification of racism—and a dangerous one. As much as we would love to believe that racism is confined to “stupid” people, this isn’t true. There are highly intelligent, charismatic people who are racist. And there are quiet, sweet people who harbor racist tendencies. The film addressed the ugly face of racism, but not the rest of the body, and the rest of the body—the insidious, unexpected part—is the one we need to worry about.
Additionally, the film seemed to try to tell a success story of a national failing overcome. With the repeated line of “The world is changing,” Helgeland’s script argues that the world has moved past racism. This is simply not true, and a quick drive from Mercer to the movie theatre will confirm that there is still segregation and racism, even if it is not openly or legally supported.
As a movie, I give it a B. Decently acted, nice to look at and with all the typical feelings of triumph and camaraderie that come with most sports movies. But I was disappointed. For a film about a man who took an active stand against racism—not by retaliating on the ball field, but by his speeches, public appearances and advocacy—“42” falls far short of what its hero stood for.
(04/25/13 5:20pm)
Karen Zacarias’ play “Legacy of Light” is the last show I will ever see as a Mercer student, and I am not exaggerating: the Mercer Players could not have ended this season on a better note. Visually stunning and brilliantly acted, “Legacy” shows how well the Players can take a wonderful (albeit strange) script and turned it into a breathtaking piece of art.
“Legacy of Light” interweaves the stories of Émilie du Châtelet, a French physicist whose notable work was translating Isaac Newton’s “Principia”, and Olivia Hastings Brown, a modern astrophysicist who has recently discovered a new planet in its beginning stages. Crossing the lines of space and time, the story follows both women as they hit the same pivotal point in their lives: pregnancy.
Émilie becomes pregnant at the age of 42 by her young lover (who is neither her older lover, the poet Voltaire, or her husband, the Marquis du Châtelet) and fears childbirth might cause her death, while Olivia—after a brush with death herself—decides she wants a baby and, because she cannot conceive, turns to a young woman named Millie for her help as a surrogate mother. Throughout the play Émilie and Olivia wrestle with the complications a new child will bring to their work and their identity. It is a play about vocation, parenthood, dreams and legacy.
The Mercer Players took this rich, layered material and ran with it. As per usual, director Scott Mann hit a home run with his selection of the ensemble. Julie Allen was fantastic as Émilie, bringing a stateliness and composure that fit her wealthy French character very well. Allen’s portrayal brought out the calculated restraint required of a brilliant, powerful woman in a patriarchal society.
Patrick Mathis brought an energized performance as Émilie’s devoted and hot-tempered lover, Voltaire. Mathis—in what may be his best performance I’ve seen on the Backdoor stage—delivered some of the funniest lines in the show with finesse, capturing Voltaire’s barbed tone but also the depth of the poet’s feeling for Émilie and her daughter Pauline. Speaking of Pauline, Maggie Rogers did a wonderful job bringing her character to life during Rogers’ debut as a Mercer Player. Her character was noticeably younger than the others of her time period, and she pulled off the role with a sweetness and youthful exuberance—as did Kevin Kersey, who played Émilie’s young lover Saint-Lambert. John Farrington made a steady, affectionate Marquis that seemed befitting of a Frenchman who was tolerant of his wife’s many lovers.
From the contemporary half of the play, Maconite Liane Treiman was wonderful as the brilliant but scatterbrained Olivia. Her performance was convincing, particularly strong at her moments of crisis as she wrestled with her fears that she cannot handle being a mother. Her dynamic with Liam McDermott, who played her husband Peter, was lovely to watch; the two picked up each other’s lines in a very natural way, as one would expect of a long-married couple. This role was very different from McDermott’s previous performances, and he brought a paternal warmth to his character that was a pleasant, refreshing surprise.
Suzanne Stroup was perfect as Millie, the young woman chosen to carry the Browns’ baby. Stroup convincingly conveyed the mood swings of being pregnant and being young and impulsive. She had great chemistry with Alex Preston, who played her brother Lewis. In the second act, Preston’s confrontation with McDermott’s character creates one of the strongest scenes in the play, carried off flawlessly by the excellent acting between Preston, McDermott, Stroup and Treiman.
Visually, the show was beautiful. The backdrop looked like a watercolor of the halos cast by differently colored lights, and the trees crafted by the cast lent a visual element to the play’s recurring mention of Newton’s story in which he discovers gravity thanks to a falling apple. However, the most stunning visual element of the show was the lighting. Marian Zielinksi outdid herself with lights that cast fragmented patterns on the floor, the backdrop and the actors, as if they were cast through a stained-glass window. The lights evoked the idea of constellations, fitting the show’s emphasis on physics and astronomy, and created a lovely continuity between the two different time periods.
“Legacy of Light” was probably my favorite of all the Mercer Players shows I have seen during my time here, and I would like to personally extend a thank-you to the cast and crew for such an incredible performance. Good luck to the graduating seniors: the Backdoor Theatre will miss you dearly. And to the actors and crew they leave behind: break a leg. May you have many more performances like this one.
(04/25/13 5:20pm)
Alternative rock band Switchfoot delivered a fantastic performance at BearStock this year, engaging the audience both with music from their newer albums in addition to their hit “Dare You to Move”. Switchfoot could not linger long after their performance April 13, but the Cluster managed to catch the band before they boarded the tour bus going back to the Atlanta airport. Bassist Tim Foreman took a few moments to answer a few questions with the Cluster.
Cluster: Thank you guys so much for coming. My first question: What have you guys been up to since “Vice Verses”?
Tim Foreman: We have been up to everything. We’ve been working on a film and a new album. We spent the last year kind of traveling around the world. We hand-picked some of our favorite surf spots and booked concerts there. The whole idea is trying to collide music and surfing and find home in the journey.
C: So is that the idea behind “Fading West”?
TF: That’s the idea. And it started out as just a film with a soundtrack, and then we decided, ‘You know what? Why would we just make a soundtrack? Why don’t we just make our ninth record and, you know, do it right?’ So we’ve been holed up in the studio for the last six months, really taking our time to make the best record we’ve ever made. That’s always the goal, you know?
C: What’s going to set the ninth record apart from the previous albums? What’s new about your sound? Are you exploring any new ideas?
TF: Yeah, we’re really taking our time. It reminds me of what we did with “Hello Hurricane”. We’ve written another 80 songs and we’ve just really gotten lost in the studio, which is a good thing. We’ve allowed ourselves to make some mistakes along the way in order to find some new sounds, and we’re really proud of how it’s coming out.
C: What’s your favorite of all the songs you guys have written to perform? That’s a big question, I know.
TF: It is. It’s different every night. Tonight, I think my favorite was the last song we played, “Where I Belong”, which is usually a highlight for me, but tonight especially felt really great out under the stars.
C: I’m a big fan of that one too. How is playing for a college audience like this different from playing for a regular audience?
TF: I love it. I mean, it’s where we started playing music, was in college. I was still in high school, but we played colleges, you know, and that’s kind of where our music grew up. I think college is a great place for people to kind of be searching, both musically and theologically, and just kind of asking the big questions, which is always where music lives and breathes, so we always feel really at home playing colleges.
C: What were you guys like as students, if you don’t mind me asking?
TF: Oh, gosh. Well, I was studying computer science and physics, so I was pretty math-oriented in college. But we surfed a lot, so that maybe balanced me out.
C: What’s the biggest trouble you got into as a student?
TF: All the trouble I got into was in junior high and high school. I got all that out of the way before I got to college.
For more information about upcoming concerts, the album release date and developments with “Fading West,” check out the band’s website at www.switchfoot.com.
(04/10/13 2:28pm)
Avondale graves found in road constructionThe Georgia Department of Transportation is receiving national recognition from the Federal Highway Administration for the department’s work relocating a forgotten slave burial ground near Sardis Church in South Macon.
The Federal Highway Association has presented the Exemplary Human Environment Initiatives Award to the GDOT in the category of Education and Training Programs.
Specifically, the award recognizes the GDOT “for developing a comprehensive strategy to educate the public on the discovery and relocation of a historic cemetery,” according to the Federal Highway Administration website.
The department’s work with the Avondale Burial Place was one of 13 projects to receive the award in 2012, and one of three to win in the Education and Training Programs category.
Since the Transportation Department’s discovery of the site, members of the department have worked to carefully exhume graves, take DNA samples, track down descendants of the deceased and uncover the history of the site.
They have also created a detailed website (www.avondaleburialplace.org) to inform the public about the archaeological process and the historical significance of the site, in addition to producing a documentary about the site—called “I Remember, I Believe”—with the Federal Highway Association and Georgia Public Broadcasting.
The documentary is scheduled to be shown at the Archaeology Channel’s International Film and Video Festival in May, according to the news page of the Avondale Burial Place website.
The department also compiled a substantial archaeological report about the care and relocation of the graves.
According to Sharman Southall, a historian at the GDOT who has worked on the project since its beginning in 2009, the department did not know about the burial ground until the final stages of its project to tie the Sardis Church Road interchange on I-75 with the Macon Airport.
Before the department broke ground on the road project—which, because of the grave project, is not under construction as of yet—a local told representatives he had heard of an old slave burial ground somewhere on the site of the proposed road.
Southall said when the department checked for evidence of the burial ground, they found no evidence of graves—no burial markers or depressions in the earth.
“[But] the man just spoke with so much conviction that there was a cemetery there,” Southhall said.
Prompted by the local’s certainty, the department began to look at the site with archaeology equipment and rescue dogs trained to find cadavers.
After a process called “stripping,” in which archaeologists take the first few layers of soil off a site, department representatives discovered the shapes of grave shafts.
“Of course, we didn’t really know the extent,” Southall said. “The thing about a burial is that you don’t really know what you have until you dig it up.”
What they had was 101 unmarked graves, containing “personal objects like wedding bands, necklaces, a coin purse, and combs” along with the human remains, according to the March 2013 FHWA newsletter.
Southall said the proposed road could not be moved due to other landmarks being in the way, but the department did not want to pave over graves.
To resolve the conflict, the department began an initiative to move the graves to a church near Byron, Ga.
According to Southall, the department placed the remains of each grave in small containers, “like caskets,” and moved them to the new location, where they were buried in the same layout they were found in.
She said this was so as not to break up family plots, if there were any, and also so that remains might be more easily identified if anyone were to come forward with more information about the graves.
Though the re-interring process has been completed, the department is open to approach by researches from academia.
According to a March 21 news release on the website, a Georgia State student is conducting research on the dust left in the graves.
“I wish we’d done that [engage with students] in the process of the recovery,” Southall said. “It would have been interesting for students to see.”
“I’ve actually got some of the films,” Southall added, referencing the footage taken during the recovery process. “I would love to get them in the hands of folks who could use them for academic purposes.”
For more information about the Avondale Burial Place and ways to engage, visit the website at avondaleburialplace.org.
(04/10/13 2:06pm)
Senior at Vanderbilt talks about her speculative fiction novel
Kat Zhang’s novel “What’s Left of Me”—the first book of the Hybrid Chronicles—takes place in an America like our own except in one respect: every person is born with two souls in their body.
For most of childhood, the two souls coexist harmoniously, sharing their body and their life like siblings. By the time the child reaches a certain age, one of the souls—the “recessive” soul—fades away naturally. Except, sometimes, it doesn’t.
Eva is a recessive soul who never faded away. She and her sister Addie secretly share the same body, keeping Eva’s soul hidden from everyone in the outside world. If Eva is discovered, the girls will be sent to an institution for Hybrids, who are considered dangerous and unstable.
Eva’s existence is little more than a passenger in Addie’s head until the girls meet two other Hybrid teenagers, who know a way to let Eva “out” to move the girls’ body and act of her own will again. Eva desperately seizes this chance to live again.
What begins as one girl’s lust for life quickly unravels into a taut plot of intrigue with a corrupt government, underground movements, the paranoia of authority and the lengths to which individuals will go to not just exist, but to really live.
Zhang, a senior at Vanderbilt University, agreed to a phone interview with the Cluster. After discussing that her book was not, as many readers have labeled it, “dystopian” in the true sense—it does not take place in the future as the consequence of present actions, but instead takes place in an alternate reality to our own—she went on to talk about her book, the writing process and the experience of completing a novel while still in college.
Cluster: Where did the idea come from?
Kat Zhang: Basically it came from the idea of the little voice in the back of people’s heads. It could be called your internal monologue or whatever. When I explain it to younger people, I refer to it as the voice that tells you to do your homework when you’d rather be playing video games. I started thinking, what if that voice was a whole other person? They couldn’t control your body, they could only talk to you. I kind of imagined what it would be like to be stuck in your own body like that, how frustrating that would be. That’s how we got to Eva, and the rest of the story kind of took off from there.
C: Could you explain how a Hybrid works? Is it essentially two different people in one form, or one person with two personalities?
KZ: I guess that’s something I sort of left up to the reader. It’s definitely a complicated question. I think different readers see it in different ways. Most people interpret is as two people occupying the same body, but it’s interesting to see it as two facets of the same person. Everyone’s got different facets. I think it’s interesting to see it either way.
C: Could you tell us about the relationship between Eva and Addie?
KZ: It’s a really special relationship. Actually, it’s one that came surprisingly easy for me to write. They have a strange relationship because they are sisters, but they’re not really sisters. They share the same body; they’ve had, up until this point, identical experiences. They’re really only different in the way people perceive them and in their innate differences. I think of them as two people who have to be bound together, and because they’re bound together they have this very special relationship.
C: Speaking of Addie and Eva, is there any significance to their names?
KZ: I’ve had people point out to me in that their names reminded them of Adam and Eve, but I didn’t intend that. I did choose the name Eva for the definition. In Hebrew it means life, or the living one. …When I wanted to come up with a character who is literally trying to regain her life, it seemed like a natural name for her. With Addie, the name just kind of felt right.
C: A lot of reviews I’ve seen say your book takes on the issue of “what it means to be human.” Was that what you were going for?
KZ: I think a lot of times when I write—especially this one, because it was one of the first major projects I undertook—I didn’t think a lot about how I wanted to send a message. I just told naturally the story I thought needed to be told. In my head, it was always about this girl who had been denied this chance to live by society, and her fight to regain her life and to show the rest of the world that she deserves this life and that just because she’s doing it differently doesn’t mean she’s doing it wrong.
C: How did you find the balance between a busy college life and a demanding book project?
KZ: It does mean sometimes there’s less time for other things. One of the good things about writing is it is done in spurts. Sometimes my editor will need something at the end of the month, so it will be a really busy month. Then I might have time after that; while she’s reading things might be a little more chill. Most of it is time management. I might be in fewer clubs on campus. Mostly I think it works because I like writing so much and I really enjoy this project. It’s sort of like a job and a hobby at the same time.
C: What did you read while you were writing? Did any of that have an effect on your book?
KZ: I was so busy in high school reading high school reading list books, I didn’t read a whole lot of young adult fiction at the time. Personally, I wasn’t reading a ton… I think I was actually inspired by books I read when I was 12-13. “The Golden Compass”, “Ender’s Game”. For “The Golden Compass” I think it was the whole world. It was the first time I felt like that world could be really real. I really loved the main character. Still now, when I read books, or when I try to write, the most important thing to me is the characters. With “Ender’s Game”, I liked the complexity of the characters and how they were multifaceted. That didn’t exist in the books I’d been reading before.
C: What does your writing space look like?
KZ: I’m not super picky, mostly because I have to write anywhere. Generally, if I can choose, I like to be somewhere really quiet because I get so easily distracted. So, quiet, kind of dim. I do a lot of my writing at my desk or on my couch or on my bed or something.
C: Did you ever have issues with writer’s block? How did you overcome that?
KZ: It was a big problem. I was 12 when I decided I was going to publish a book, but I never finished one until I was 17. Between 12 and 17 I would start all these books that I would never finish. In a way it was just all about pushing through. Have you heard of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)? That was actually what helped me finish my book. I’m a perfectionist, but having that helped me finish. Once you have it out there, you can revise. That’s how I push through now.
Zhang is currently preparing for graduation from Vanderbilt and for a book tour to seven cities in the U.S. The second book of the Hybrid Chronicles, “Once We Were”, is scheduled to hit the bookshelves this fall on Sept. 17. For more information, visit her website at katzhangwriter.com.
(04/10/13 2:02pm)
Jim Crisp, Jr. has done it again at Theatre Macon on Cherry Street. His cast and crew bring Meredith Wilson’s classic, “The Music Man”, to life with energy and enthusiasm.
I had never seen a production of “The Music Man” before the Sunday matinee on April 7, but I can say that Theatre Macon has won me over to the show. The ensemble cast sounded great singing together, and the humorous and well-executed choreography made it hard to look away. Overall, the production left audiences with that feel-good factor for which “The Music Man” is so well known.
The show opens on a train full of traveling salesmen, who are ranting about a certain swindler going by “Professor Harold Hill.” Hill’s ability to con whole towns into buying instruments and uniforms from him is so effective that he ruins the territory for other salesmen. Certainly, though, his “marching band” trick won’t work in Iowa.
Hill overhears the conversation and takes it as a challenge, setting out immediately to pull his “music man” trick in little Iowa town. He turns the town on its head, staying one step ahead of the mayor’s cabinet (whom Hill turns into a barbershop quartet) and a sharp librarian determined to find the truth. The show is comical, lighthearted and fun, with a winning and optimistic resolution.
Crisp’s casting decisions were, overall, great. Kevin Epperson was a fantastic choice as Harold Hill. He owned the stage with his dynamic, energetic movements, and he delivered his lines with all of the warmth and charisma of a convincing conman. Epperson’s singing voice was not the strongest in the ensemble, but it was still enjoyable to hear, and what he lacked vocally he more than made up for with his commanding performance.
The rest of the cast was hard put to match Epperson, but most turned in strong performances as well. Gail Johnson was wonderful as Marian the librarian’s Irish mother, and all four members of the barbershop quartet shone in their acting and their singing. Rachel Chabot’s performance as Marian Paroo, the town librarian and recipient of Hill’s romantic attentions, was satisfying, though somewhat weak. Mercer’s own Clayton Mote did a great job as the rascally Marcellus, playing well off of Epperson’s Hill.
Crisp recruited a horde of children, most under the age of 10, to fill the ranks of the River City band, and all of them were delightful and adorable. Grey Faulkner tugged at the audience’s heartstrings as little Winthrop Paroo. The cast should be most commended for making a full, dynamic background against which the main characters could act. Every individual was in character even if he or she was not in the spotlight, and the result was an immersive experience that made the town of River City feel considerably more real.
The production was unfortunately plagued by technical difficulties. Two scene transitions were long to the point of being awkward, and there were some obvious issues with the microphones. There was one scene in which an actress clearly forgot the lines to her song and spent the last fifteen seconds of the music mute. Another of the actresses assured me after the show that I had come “on the worst night.”
I have to say, though: if that was the worst night of the run, then the show is going to do very well. Difficulties aside, Theatre Macon’s “The Music Man” is a delightful crowd-pleaser, and will continue to fill that role until its run ends on April 20.
(03/27/13 1:58pm)
Though Arthur Conan Doyle published the last Sherlock Holmes story in 1927, the legacy of Sherlock Holmes was far from over. The detective has been reincarnated more than almost any other literary character in the Western canon. As a culture, we can’t get enough of Sherlock Holmes. His name is a household byword for someone with keen observation and sharp deductive skills.
The most recent versions of the Holmes character come in two competing TV series: BBC’s “Sherlock”, which premiered in 2010, and “Elementary” on CBS, which opened last fall. When the “Sherlock” fandom heard about CBS’s Americanized retaliation to the BBC series, they released a deluge of disdain and criticism on Tumblr and other fan websites. “Elementary”, however, has earned decent reviews for its first season, garnering B+ ratings on the media criticism site Metacritic.com.
So which show is better? That’s up for viewers to decide. In the meantime, the Cluster offers a comparison of the two shows to help out fans looking to start watching one or both series.
“Elementary” re-contextualizes the Holmes character by bringing him to the future and to America, integrating the classic persona with the American style of crime drama.
Jonny Lee Miller’s performance as the detective himself is, in some ways, more true to Doyle’s character. Miller’s Holmes is charismatic without being warm and condescending without being unbearable. His character is also fairly steady. He does not go through considerable character growth, much like Doyle’s Holmes, who did not change much until Doyle brought Holmes back from the dead for the later stories.
Making Watson a woman was an interesting choice on the part of CBS. The show has managed to keep the sexual tension between Watson and Sherlock to a minimum, which is refreshing when compared to other male-female dynamic duos in modern television. Lucy Liu’s Watson has considerably more of a temper than her literary counterpart, and unlike the Watson of the books, she actually steps up with critical components of the cases to help save the day. She also gets a back story, and relationships with people outside of her friendship with Sherlock, whereas the original Watson had very few relationships outside of Baker Street and his (scarcely mentioned) marriage.
Watson is not the only character who is more fleshed out in the CBS Holmes reboot. The detectives of the NYPD get their own character arcs as well, and scenes exploring their relationships with people who are not at all relevant to the arcs of Holmes and Watson. While Miller’s Holmes still holds the department in contempt, the police of “Elementary” are considerably more capable than those of Doyle’s Scotland Yard, who were sometimes incompetent to the point of amusement.
The episodes of “Elementary”—of which there are currently 18, in 45-minute segments—feature original plots but draw from Sherlock canon for their deductive method. Despite its strengths in other areas, the way “Elementary” portrays the deductive process looks no different from the one depicted in other crime dramas. You could plug any names in for “Holmes” and “Watson” and it would be just as effective; the power of the original stories is lost.
Overall, though, I would say “Elementary” is worth watching, especially to tide the anxious viewer over until the long-awaited third season of “Sherlock” comes out.
And that brings us to the BBC show. One look at Tumblr will reveal just how much of a following Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat have garnered with their wildly popular adaptation. People have literally cried over the postponement of the third season. This could be put down to the excellent writing and compelling characters. Then again, it could also be put down to the fact that half of the “Sherlock” fans have hopeless crushes on the titular actor, Benedict Cumberbatch. (And, to be honest, it is very hard to blame them.)
Gatiss and Moffat are diehard Doyle fans, a trait that shows strongly in their scripts. Whereas “Elementary” places the character in a modern setting, “Sherlock” transposes the entire Doyle universe—plots and all—to modern-day London. The plots of the six 90-minute episodes draw heavily from the most well-known original stories but update them with new technology and new social norms. Rather than his team of street children, Sherlock’s “Baker Street Irregulars” are the homeless network of London; Baskerville, rather than an aristocratic estate, is a military test facility; and Watson’s chronicle of the duo’s adventures is a blog rather than a diary. Sherlock’s antisocial and obsessive personality matches the interpersonal world of digital communication well, making the integration of technology and social media seamless and incredibly effective.
The reinvention of the original plots gives the classic stories a fresh, invigorating feel and leaves room to explore the canon’s unanswered questions, such as Sherlock’s dynamic with his brother and the practical implications of a brain as keen as Sherlock’s. (Watson’s hypothesis: Asperger’s syndrome.) The details add a touch of color that the straightforward nature of the original stories lacked. Audiences can tell that Gatiss and Moffat had fun with the writing process, making the show delightful to watch.
The series departs from the original series by exploring the overlooked emotional potential of the stories. The relationship between Watson and Sherlock gets a lot of attention as Watson learns to understand his eccentric, obsessive friend and Sherlock begins to care about other people for the first time in his life. Watson and Sherlock have clear and well-developed character arcs, making the series much more than just a crime drama.
Hands down, the aspect of “Sherlock” that best preserves the feel of the original stories (aside from a really incredible score) is its portrayal of the deductive process. Text appears on screen to track Sherlock’s thought process, and he delivers his deductions in rapid, intense monologues that help evoke the trademark wonder at Holmes’s brilliant mind.
(03/27/13 1:55pm)
Seriously. After six consecutive critical flops, you’d think they would learn
Starting with the failure that was Warner Bros.’ “Red Riding Hood” (2011), five different studios have tried their hands at remaking old fairy tales with thematically modern twists. Since then, Hollywood has produced at least half a dozen fairytale remakes that have all underperformed at the box office and in critical reviews.
“Red Riding Hood”, starring Amanda Seyfried, got universally roasted by movie critics, even earning itself a spot on Time magazine’s list of the Top Ten Worst Movies of 2011. Movie critic site Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 11 percent “Rotten” rating, and critics on the site slammed the film for terrible special effects, “lackluster performances” and an uncanny resemblance to the Twilight franchise (because Catherine Hardwicke directed both). Hardwicke’s attempt to explore the sexual nature of the old fairy tale fell flat in a botched effort to turn Little Red into a character who was not a feminist nightmare, which also spectacularly failed thanks to the addition of a (very, very bad) love triangle written into the plot.
Currently “Jack the Giant Slayer” holds a 53 percent “Rotten” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and site critic Gitesh Pandya predicts that it will be hard-pressed to earn enough revenue to make the production financially worth it. Its opening weekend only brought in $28 million in the face of a staggering $200-million budget, and it may be that the cast and crew are not going to see that making the movie was worth their time.
Why, after all of this floundering, is Hollywood still producing fairytale remakes? The consistent mediocre reception ought to be enough to turn off filmmakers, or at least scriptwriters, from the material. “Jack” is not the only one of the films struggling to break even with its production costs. The only one of the mentioned films to really soar with its box-office revenues was “Snow White and the Huntsman”; all the others struggled in domestic markets.
The biggest criticism I’ve seen for these movies, across the board, is bad scriptwriting and lame, flat stories that fail to engage the audience. It’s not like decent fairytale remakes haven’t been made before: Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” and DreamWorks’ “Shrek” series received good reviews thanks to the deconstruction and subversion of the classic stories, and it goes without saying that, whatever it failed to do for the feminist movement, Disney at least performed well with its princess movies.
Rewriting a fairy tale is one of the easiest outs a writer can take, but one of the most difficult to pull off successfully. Sometimes timing has a lot to do with it—perhaps audiences of 2011-2012 aren’t in the mood for fairy tales—but more often it has everything to do with the story. These tales are familiar, making up the backbone of Western literature. They are rich and dark and complex, but they are familiar. When rewriting a fairy tale, a writer either needs to get back to the tale’s dark roots or subvert it to come up with a new message.
Modern audiences obviously don’t go for damsels in distress anymore, and a deus ex machine is uninteresting compared to the pluck and grit of an active, clever hero. This accounts for the recent trend of trying to make Snow White more of a badass (a feat only accomplished by ABC’s “Once Upon a Time” series). However, a writer can’t just hand the leading lady a sword and expect audiences to love the story. It’s a delicate balance between rewriting the tale and staying true to its gritty but magical roots.
Perhaps writers can do a better job in the future. For now—for the next five years, maybe—I advise: stop it with the fairytale remakes. If they are going to be done, they should be done well, and currently there doesn’t seem to be anyone in the ranks of screenwriters up for the job.
(03/06/13 5:18pm)
A spay-and-neuter initiative continues to be the most promising means of mitigating Macon’s stray animal population, but efforts to begin such an initiative have been held up for various reasons, according to Macon officials involved in animal control.
Mercer students might not be aware of it, but Macon has a rampant stray animal problem.
Tim Jackson, an animal control officer at the local shelter on Eleventh Street, said the shelter is operating at full capacity every week.
“We could fill this shelter up in a week if they said, ‘Go pick up strays,’” Jackson said. “And we have 60 places.”
According to statistics from the county animal control department, the local animal shelter took in a total of 1,863 animals last year alone. Of that number, less than 250 were adopted, and less than half were transferred to rescue groups to get them out of the kill shelter. At least 900 were euthanized at the shelter.
Many people get up in arms about the shelter’s kill rates, but shelter director Sarah Tenon says the shelter’s staff does all they can to keep the animals they have alive. Though it does maintain a strict holding capacity of only 60 animals, the shelter will stop accepting owner drop-offs if its facility is full.
“We have to tell [owners] if we take [the animals], we’re going to have to euthanize them,” Tenon said, adding that the other option is to euthanize another animal to make room for the new addition.
“People say we just want to kill [the animals],” Tenon said. “Well, no, we don’t want to kill them, but we do want to get out of this vicious cycle.”
The “vicious cycle” she refers to is when animals are on the street, whether they are strays or just running loose, they breed without inhibition because Macon citizens consistently fail to spay and neuter their pets. This creates a new generation of animals, who will likely grow up to do the same thing if they do not get hit by cars or starve before they mature.
Currently, Macon does not require owners to spay or neuter their pets. Macon City Councilmember Nancy White proposed a bill for an enforced sterilization law some time ago, but it has been tabled indefinitely by other members of the council who do not support the legislation.
According to White, some cities have successfully reduced their stray population by passing spay-and-neuter laws. She said the drafters of the bill modeled their legislation off the laws passed in those cities.
“There are other pockets in America that have been so successful with their spay-neuter legislation that we ship animals out there, because they don’t have any animals left to adopt,” White said.
Some of the arguments raised against the mandatory sterilization law include private property rights and the issue of enforcement, White said. She said some council members objected, saying pet owners should not be told what to do with their animals, particularly when the order involves a costly surgery.
“Typically, the people who raise this objection are not the kinds of pet owners you need to worry about,” White said.
She also said that enforcing the law would not require animal control to employ any new staff members or take on any extensive new duties. Like police officers who check insurance whenever they pull someone over for speeding, animal control officers would check for compliance with the sterilization law on their routine calls, in the course of “normal duty.”
White admits it is not a perfect solution, and because city council members do not support the bill as of yet, sterilization legislation does not look like a solution that will be happening any time soon.
However, Tenon agrees that an aggressive stance to spaying and neutering is necessary. Recently, animal control received a grant from PetsMart Charities specifically to help pet owners obtain free sterilization services for their animals. However, despite the fact that they have advertised through flyers and online campaigns, Tenon said few Macon pet owners have taken advantage of the service.
In order to raise awareness and encourage participation in the program, Tenon said the shelter intends to conduct a “community walk” in which participants go door to door to advertise the service. She also intends to have churches spread the message to their congregations, particularly those in communities located in the 31201 zip code, from which most of the stray animal alerts come.
Animal control is expected to move to a new facility out by Macon State College in August of 2014. The shelter, which has been a long time coming, will have more spots for animals and will be built with room to grow if later funding permits. However, Tenon said that until Macon residents start taking responsibility over the fixing of their animals, the problem of population will continue.
For information regarding free spay and neutering services, call Animal Control at 478-751-9200.
(03/06/13 3:50pm)
Isaac Marion’s zombie romance novel comes alive thanks to Summit Entertainment’s adaptation, “Warm Bodies”. Jonathan Levine does a brilliant job of adapting a novel told mostly through internal dialogue into a film that is visually engaging , humorous and heartwarming, balancing the macabre of the zombie genre with romantic tropes for a delightfully fun film.
The cast features a number of rising stars who pull off their roles in a deft and surprisingly convincing way. R is brought to life by Nicholas Hoult (X-Men: First Class), who has come a long way from the chubby child star of About a Boy. Hoult’s delivery of R’s inner monologue is somewhat stiff, but his facial expressions are incredibly emotive—as they must be, since zombies have trouble stringing sentences together. Teresa Palmer (I am Number Four) is lovely as Julie, and Analeigh Tipton (Crazy, Stupid, Love) adds a layer of humor as Julie’s best friend Nora. The weakest member of the young human cast is Dave Franco, James Franco’s younger brother, who plays Julie’s late boyfriend Perry. As far as older actors go, Rob Corddry is hilarious and almost heartbreaking as M, R’s best friend. The film also features John Malkovich, whose role as Julie’s father is thankfully understated (because John Malkovich is the same in every role he performs).
Visually, Warm Bodies is surprisingly artistic, with plenty of wide-angle shots to emphasize the desolation of the post-disaster world and the emotional distance between characters. Some shots, particularly the introductory scenes in the humans’ walled-in city, are done with a shaky handheld camera for no discernible reason. The camera work in the rest of the film is remarkably good for a film of this type. The makeup for the zombies is different from any other zombie movie I have ever seen, evoking the idea of corpses but still teetering on the edge of humanity. At times the zombie makeup looks somewhat unconvincing, but this was most likely intentional, particularly as the zombies start to transition back to becoming humans.
The comedic timing is one of the movie’s greatest strengths. There are few moments in which the romantic tension or angst is not broken by humor, whether that humor comes from the clever screenwriting or an expression from the characters. Warm Bodies is aware that its premise is borderline ridiculous, so the humor keeps the film from becoming overly cheesy (not that it isn’t fairly cheesy to being with). Its comedic aspect so overshadows the romantic elements that it’s easy to forget the movie is supposed to be a romance. One of the movie’s biggest laughs comes after R, who has just lost Julie, tells his best friend M that he is “not okay”—one of the first times R has expressed any sort of actual feeling in the movie. After a zombie hug (which was still not as awkward as the Voldemort hug in the last Harry Potter movie) and an awkward pause, M pops out with, “Bitches, man.”
The soundtrack serves a similar purpose, keeping the film grounded in humor without apologizing for its subject matter. In addition to an original soundtrack, the film includes musical choices like the Scorpions’ “Rock You Like a Hurricane” and “Patience” from Guns N’ Roses. R and Julie’s montage is musically accompanied by Bruce Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart,” which is hilariously appropriate for the scene.
There are some obvious holes in the logic of the movie. For one thing, R and Julie plummet off a 20-story building into a body of water, which should have killed Julie and flattened the zombie according to the laws of physics. Still, you’re watching a zombie romance; the suspension of disbelief is expected. The resolution is somewhat problematic, but I would argue that it wraps up better than the book does. Unlike the novel, the resolution of the movie does not depend entirely upon R and Julie but expands to the reconciliation of the zombie and human communities.
I have heard many people write off “Warm Bodies” simply because of its subject matter. For some (very understandable) reason, people are turned off by the idea of a zombie romance. To those people, I say: give the movie a chance. It is incredibly cheesy at times, but its humor and heart more than make up for it, making “Warm Bodies” one of the biggest crowd-pleasers to appear in film this year.
(03/06/13 3:48pm)
The National Players brought an intriguing performance of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” to the Grand Opera House as part of the GrandKids Arts Education series.
The National Players is a unique group for the Grand to bring in; though it is a professional theatre company that tours internationally, its cast and crew are made up entirely of amateur performers, most of whom are just coming out of their college or post-graduate education programs in the theatrical arts.
For those unfamiliar with George Orwell’s political allegory, “Animal Farm” is a cautionary tale about animals in a barnyard who attempt to create a communist society in which they are all equal and end up enslaving themselves to the farm’s pigs.
To keep the play from becoming visually hokey, the Players took a minimalist approach: the actors wore loose, baggy clothing of varying color schemes to indicate their species. They evoked their characters’ animal natures by mimicking certain beastlike mannerisms, including dropping to all fours on occasion and stamping their feet, as if they were stamping a hoof, instead of clapping.
The set, too, was minimalist. According to the National Players’ website, the company carries its own costumes, set pieces, and tech with it while the actors are on the road. Naturally, this means that the players are somewhat limited in what kind of set pieces they can bring with them.
Rather than rigging anything that looked like a barn or a farm, the cast used a bare framework through which the animals could string a thin rope to indicate their labor on the farm. They also used thick spools of rope, held in metal frames to make them boxlike rather than round, which the actors used as farm equipment and, later, to build a windmill under the direction of the pigs.
Most peculiar about the choices regarding set design was the use of two projectors on either corner of the stage, which the characters used to project backgrounds or text onto the set’s backdrop. At first the projectors seemed like a cheap out to compensate for the minimal set. As the play went on, however, the actors used the projectors in creative ways: to project backgrounds, to evoke a thunderstorm, to show the audience the animals’ “laws”, and to obscure actors as they switched characters—which they did regularly. The technology, though jarring at first, became a seamless addition to the production. The only complaint I have is that the tech table, including a laptop with a glowing screen, was easily visible from any point in the audience, reminding the viewer that she was watching a play every time an actor slipped over to tap at the keyboard.
The young cast of “Animal Farm” was exceptionally talented and very convincing. Unfortunately, the allegorical nature of the story and the fact that the performers occasionally rotated roles made it difficult to establish character. Also distracting were the technical issues facing the traveling troop. There were no microphones, making the dialogue hard to hear, and the house lights did not go off until halfway through the show. If either of these choices were intentional on the Players’ part, they were the wrong choices for the Grand: both became distracting for the audience.
However, the taut storyline and the fresh talent redeemed the play in the end, making for an enjoyable and thought-provoking night at the theatre. One may hope that the Players can work out the technical difficulties the next time they visit the Grand, but overall they left a good impression, and the Macon audience will be eager to see more of their work.
(03/06/13 3:45pm)
Despite freezing weather and power failure, music festival persists for patrons
Frigid weather was not enough to drive music enthusiasts away from the Drive-By Truckers’ performance at the Hummingbird Bar and Taproom’s biggest Big Bird Bash yet.
Kristen O’Neal, the festival organizer, said that in the past the Big Bird Bash has gone consistently over capacity since it began in 2011.This inspired the Hummingbird to expand the festival to incorporate bigger acts in a bigger venue so more people can come.
This year the event moved out to Luther Williams Field, the historic ball field near Macon’s Central City Park, and brought in big-name acts from out of town such as Moon Taxi from Nashville, the Modern Skirts from Athens, Atlanta-based band Drivin N Cryin and the headlining band, The Drive-By Truckers.
The festival went off without a hitch until a few minutes into The Drive-By Truckers’ set, at which point the power for the stage cut out. The band managed to salvage the moment by coming to the stands and shaking hands with the crowd, buying time for the technicians to attend to the generator before the festival resumed minutes later.
“It was really great,” O’Neal said of the festival earlier that night. “It was really cold, [but] it was a lot better than we expected.”
O’Neal said that the Hummingbird expected to sell 2,000 tickets to the event. They ended up selling about 1,200.
“It’s the cold,” O’Neal said. The projected forecast for Saturday night was 28 degrees, prompting festival coordinators to move up some of the acts before the temperature dropped.
Nevertheless, the Hummingbird sold over 500 tickets the day of the event. Many of the patrons who came to the door were local Macon residents and college students, but the crowd included people from out of state as far as Pennsylvania.
The other musical acts included Macon natives Gringo Grande and Back City Woods. Music for the festival all fell into the same vein: gritty Southern rock, the kind of music the Hummingbird often brings in for its weekend shows.
“That’s [the music] we focus on for our particular patrons,” O’Neal said. “We tried to stick with what we know.”
O’Neal said the Hummingbird is looking to bring in some country acts for next year’s Bash. She also said that to avoid the frigid temperatures, the Bash will most likely be held in the fall.
She also said that the Hummingbird is looking to continue the festival’s expansion.
“We are hoping to turn it into the Macon music festival,” O’Neal said.
For more information about the 2013 festival, future events or weekly shows at the ‘Bird,’ see the Humminbird Bar and Taproom’s website.
(03/06/13 3:43pm)
A rampant stray animal population poses several hazards for a community, and as a quick drive around town will reveal, Macon has a big problem with strays.
Loose dogs and cats often get hit by cars, and the bodies that result serve reasonable grounds for health concerns. In the case of wild dog packs, some stray animals can be legitimately dangerous.
The problem is self-perpetuating as long as there are animals on the street; if they are running around unattended, they are most likely breeding, spawning a new generation of strays to run loose, go hungry and cause problems in the community.
The county animal control department can hardly help; their small, 60-dog shelter is almost always operating at full capacity.
The animal rescue groups are also in a constant struggle to get animals off “death row” at the county shelter or to find foster homes and permanent owners for the animals they pick up themselves.
If you call any one of Central Georgia’s many animal rescue facilities, you will most likely be greeted with the message: “We’re sorry, but we can take no more animals at this time.”
However, there is at least one Macon institution that, though it is heavily involved in helping the community, has completely neglected the stray animal issue.
The stray animal issue is inseparable from the issues of poverty and lack of education, and it perpetuates poor living conditions and the overall bad health of our communities.
Despite the importance of addressing the stray animal problem, the institution in question has made no move to tackle the problem.
Mercer University, I’m looking at you.
We have an animal rescue group on campus, but my impression is that it is very small and very quiet, and only really helps to raise money and to staff the adoption day at PetsMart on occasion.
Both of these tasks, of course, are worthy and important—Macon Purrs N Paws, one of the rescue groups, sends out constant Facebook updates pleading for donations so they can feed their rescued animals and provide them with proper medical care.
But compared to the amount of time Mercer puts into community outreach programs like LEAP, Habitat for Humanity and other people-oriented service organizations, that volunteer base seems woefully small.
I’m surprised that such a community-conscious group of people could have overlooked this massive problem, especially one that has such a direct correlation with the health of the human community.
I’m not one of those manic animal rights activists who believe that “fur babies” are more important than people, but when children and unvaccinated dogs are occupying the same streets, I think we can agree there is an issue to be addressed.
So what can Mercer do? My first suggestion is for students to get involved with one or multiple of the animal rescue groups around Central Georgia to help with educating the community.
As I write in my article for this issue, an uneducated public only feeds the problem, and Macon pet owners do not know leash and licensing laws or the locations of free spay and neutering programs—both of which go a long way to control a stray pet population.
It would be effective and easy for a Greek organization or another campus group to run an education campaign in the community to help disseminate that information.
The animal rights groups and the Bibb County Animal Shelter say that they are willing to work with anyone who has the animals’ best interests at heart, so it would not be hard to find a place to plug in.
Students are not allowed to keep pets in the dorms, but for those of you who live off campus or plan to do so, I encourage you to adopt or foster a pet from one of these organizations.
It frees up space in the shelter and the rescue groups, meaning one less dog or cat has to be put down.
Even if the animal has to be given up at graduation, fostering a rescue pet gives rescue groups more time to find a permanent owner and keeps the animal from running loose in the community.
Macon has reached a point with its strays that fostering or adopting a local animal is practically an act of community service.
The health of the human community and the health of the animal community are directly related in a vicious cycle.
It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot of awareness to fix or at least slow the problem, and the existing organizations are doing all they can and still falling behind.
It is time for Mercer to get involved, and to let our bright and creative students find an innovative solution to the problem of strays.
(02/20/13 3:37pm)
The Macon Police Department is withholding comments regarding the Dec. 21 Kroger shooting until the Georgia Bureau of Investigation releases its findings.
Approximately 60 days have passed since the Dec. 21 shooting occurred. Officer Clayton Sutton shot Macon resident Sammie “Junebug” Davis Jr. three times in the chest outside the Kroger on Pio Nono Ave. Davis was picked up by emergency medical workers but later died of his wounds. Sutton has been held on administrative leave since the incident, which the police department told the media is standard procedure for officers involved in shootings.
Special agent Rodney Wall with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) told the Telegraph that agents are waiting for forensic evidence to come back from the GBI’s crime lab. Once the results arrive, the case will be handed over to the county district attorney for an evaluation of potential criminal charges.
“David Cooke asked us specifically not to comment on the case until the GBI renders its findings,” said police spokeswoman Jami Gaudet.
Wall told the Telegraph that he expects to receive the forensic results within the next two weeks.
Additionally, police chief Mike Burns met with federal officials from the Atlanta branch of the United States Department of Justice on Thursday, Feb. 14.
Gaudet said that the officials were part of a community division of the Department of Justice, but she was unable to disclose any details regarding the meeting between the chief and the officials. However, the Telegraph reported that Burns called the authorities in “as a precaution” to the reaction to the eventual findings, as well as for consultation regarding future improvements in the police department.
Both Burns and Deputy Chief Henderson Carswell were unavailable for comment.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has been looking into the incident for several weeks. Bibb County District Attorney David Cooke called the GBI shortly after he took office on Jan. 1.
Gaudet said the Macon police department was “in full support” of Cooke’s decision to bring in an investigative force from outside the community.
“It’s not unusual for the GBI to be brought in, especially for a case like this that has been controversial,” Gaudet said.
Initially, police reports claimed that Sutton came to the Kroger with a warrant for Davis’s arrest. Sutton further claimed that Davis assaulted and cut him, prompting Sutton to shoot him three times in self-defense.
However, the investigation since then has revealed that no such warrant existed. On Dec. 26, the Telegraph reported police had not found any evidence of Davis being armed.
Macon residents, particularly friends and family of Davis—known to those close to him as “Junebug”—have held several protests outside city hall since the shooting, criticizing city administration for keeping the investigation quiet and for withholding disciplinary action against Sutton.
In response to the criticism, Mayor Robert Reichert urged patience for the GBI investigation to run its course.
“Justice will be done, but we will not be rushed to judge,” Reichert told protesters during a press conference in early February. He added, “I, for one, want to know all of the facts.”
Davis had encountered Macon’s police department at Kroger prior to the events of Dec. 21, according to Tuesday’s online issue of the Telegraph. His last run-in occurred July 7, 2010. The incident report, which was uncovered by the Telegraph and can be viewed on their website, relayed that Kroger employees had called the police after customers observed Davis “acting strange” in the parking lot. An altercation ensued after Kroger employees moved to restrain Davis. One of the store managers sustained minor injuries before Macon police arrived.
Though the incident does not describe what actions Davis had committed to warrant attention, the report does go on to say, evidently, Davis had not been taking his medication for his schizophrenia. He was given an evaluation at the Medical Center of Central Georgia after family and emergency care workers arrived. The injured manager was treated on the scene.
Davis’s sister, Cheryl, was unavailable for further comment regarding the 2010 incident, the Telegraph reports. However, prior to the release of the 2010 report, she maintained that her brother “would never harass anyone.”
“I always worried about him,” Cheryl Davis said. “I always thought some rough kids in the neighborhood would bother him. I never thought the police would kill him.”
The Cluster and other Macon news venues will continue to follow the case as the GBI comes to its conclusions and releases its findings in the future.
(02/20/13 3:08pm)
Anton Chekhov’s play “The Seagull” is, as Scot Mann writes in his production notes for the Back Door Theatre’s latest performance, a play that cannot establish itself as a comedy or a tragedy. This lack of definition (despite Chekhov’s insistence that the play is a comedy) naturally makes it very challenging to perform. After Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”, “The Seagull” was an ambitious addition to the Mercer Players’ season, and the cast took difficult material and delivered a good performance.
Aesthetically, the production was beautiful. With paint, the crew managed to create a mountain silhouette and a smooth stone floor that wonderfully evoked the mountain lake at which Chekov has set the play. Ranging from bowers on the lakeshore to the furniture for the dining room and drawing room of a house on the water, the set pieces were elegant and evocative. The lighting was wonderful. In addition to the warm tones of sunlit afternoons and the cool blues of twilight, Marian Zielinski’s light design incorporated a projection of a full moon—silvery and ethereal—and a leaf pattern cast onto a forest floor as if shining through trees. And as usual, Shelley Kuhen and her costume crew did a flawless job with the costuming.
When it came to the performance itself—which I viewed Feb. 15—the play became less of an aesthetic experience and more a session in mental calisthenics. The script is challenging and specializes in subtext, rarely confronting any subject directly. The cast was very good at using tone and timing to emphasize comedic moments. Even so, long sections of the first half felt as slow as the summer afternoons the characters kept mentioning. The play did not really take off until the second act. Tense, dynamic and increasingly tragic, the second act was more of the quality performance I expect from the Players.
The show was really carried by Back Door veterans Suzanne Stroup, Liam McDermott and Tory Johnson. Johnson’s character—Arkadina, an aging actress and the mother of McDermott’s character—is vain, snobbish and possessive. Somehow Johnson managed to play her in a way that was not only convincing but sympathetic. Her scene in which she begs her lover, the writer Trigorin, to stay with her was one of the most powerful of the play thanks to Johnson’s performance.
McDermott took a little while to warm up, but when he did, his portrayal of a success-hungry and love-struck young playwright named Treplev was fantastic. His tragic and tortured Treplev was the best role I have ever seen McDermott perform, and he scaled the range of his character’s emotion deftly and compellingly. Mercer’s theatre goers are lucky to have McDermott for one more year, but they are going to sorely miss Suzanne Stroup if her plans take her away from Macon. Stroup portrayed Nina, a young and hopeful actress who becomes one of the tormented vertices in a nasty love quadrangle. Stroup effortlessly portrayed Nina’s character development, highlighting Nina’s innocence and sweetness in the first three acts but losing it for the final act, which occurs two years after the main events of the play and after Nina has been disillusioned by life. Her chemistry with McDermott in their final scene was electric, and her speeches in that scene were painfully sad but very compelling.
Other notable performances from supporting actors included Braeden Orr’s Dorn, Cohen Bickley’s Sorin and Shelby Hall’s Masha. Hall should be proud of her first Players’ performance, having completely sold the audience on her unhappy, funny and mildly neurotic character.
Sophomore Ryan Jones is another newcomer to the Back Door family. His performance as Trigorin, a famous and melancholy writer, exuded a grave calm which was effective for his character. The delivery of his lines, though, lacked variation both in tone and in rhythm, following a monotonous up-and-down pattern. A few more shows under Mann’s direction should polish Jones up from a novice to a veteran, but everyone has to start somewhere.
The casting choice I found most jarring was Jim Sisson, who played the estate manager Shamrayev. His character is written to be flamboyant, but Sisson’s performance was so over-the-top that it became overbearing. His performance did not fit well with the rest of the cast, throwing the ensemble off balance.
The overall effect of the play was shattering. The final scene between Stroup and McDermott saved the day with its height of passion and the depth of Treplev’s despair. “The Seagull” was not the strongest of the Mercer Players’ performances this season. However, they delivered another satisfying production, leaving the audience looking forward to their next endeavor in the spring, “Legacy of Light.”
(02/06/13 3:16pm)
If you happened to drive by Coliseum Court at any point between Thursday and Sunday, you might have spotted people in elephant and chimpanzee costumes waving to the cars driving by the entrance to the Ringling Bros. circus. However, these comical figures were not out to encourage people to buy tickets; they were there to encourage people to leave.
Members of PETA and various other animal rights groups, from Macon and from Atlanta, stood out in the cold for hours over the weekend to protest the Ringling Bros. use of animals in their circuses. Using animal costumes, posters bearing pictures of abused baby elephants, flyers and other animal rights literature, the small group of activists worked to dissuade people from supporting the circus’ alleged abuse of elephants and tigers.
“We’re in the 21st century,” said PETA senior campaigner Virginia Fort. “We shouldn’t be torturing animals to make a profit.”
The Ringling Bros. circus is advertised as being a family event, but Fort argued that families could really only enjoy the circus if they ignored or were not aware of what goes on “behind the scenes.” Fort thinks that ignorance of circus training tactics keeps families coming for the entertainment. Children, of course, love to watch the animals up close.
“Kids have a natural love of animals,” Fort said. “If they knew what was going on behind the scenes, they’d have to be dragged [to the circus] kicking and screaming.”
In 2009, PETA secured footage of elephant trainers at the circus striking elephants with bull hooks—heavy sticks with sharp metal hooks on the end—to keep them in line while preparing to enter the arena. The footage, supplied by an insider at the circus, showed several instances of trainers hitting the noses, ears, faces, and backsides—all sensitive areas for an elephant—with the sharp tips. The video can be viewed at PETA’s “Ringling Beats Animals” web page, along with a series of photographs documenting the restraining and training of a baby elephant using ropes and bull hooks.
Last weekend’s protesters passed out a DVD of the footage to cars coming into the circus or stalled in traffic coming out. They also passed out standard PETA literature, such as flyers and fact sheets, to adults who seemed interested or willing to at least consider PETA’s point.
However, a DVD of animals being abused is potentially disturbing to young children. Instead of catering their efforts to the adult demographic only, the PETA protesters passed out elephant stickers and coloring books. Anna Ware, a PETA volunteer who also heads up a group called “Ban the Bull Hook,” said that the coloring books were a huge success and that often cars would stop and ask for several more books to pass out.
“We do have a lot of people who actually turn around,” Fort said.
While many people consider performing animals to be the most entertaining part of a circus, Fort argued that plenty of performing groups have no problems drawing crowds without an animal attraction. The primary example of this, she pointed out, is Cirque du Soleil.
For more information regarding PETA’s allegations against the Ringling Bros. Circus and what you can do to help animals in confinement, visit PETA’s Web page and ringlingbeatsanimals.com.
(02/06/13 3:07pm)
When I first read the synopsis for the book “Warm Bodies” (2011), I literally burst out laughing. A zombie love story? Surely the supernatural-romance genre that exploded with “Twilight” had gone too far. I thought the book was bound to be a hysterical farce or an absolutely horrible piece of fiction.
As it turns out, Isaac Marion’s novel is neither awful nor ridiculous. “Warm Bodies” is actually surprisingly philosophical, humorous, aggressively hopeful and at times quite touching. Playing with both romantic tropes and familiar zombie themes, “Warm Bodies” is less a love story than an exploration—and celebration—of what it means to be human.
The story is told through the undead eyes of R, a young zombie of indefinite origin who seems to have more of an issue with his state in life than his fellow animated corpses. The world has fallen to the zombie apocalypse, and only a few human strongholds remain to fight against a hungry world outside the walls of their fortresses. R and the others belonging to his zombie community “live” in an airport outside a city full of human stragglers, whom the zombies hunt when they need to.
This is how R meets Julie: on a feeding mission. While the rest of his pack wipes out Julie’s team, R—inspired by the memories of Julie’s boyfriend, whose brain R has just consumed—makes the decision to protect instead of devour Julie. Julie, though reluctant at first, makes the decision to trust R. The relationship that grows between them begins to change both of them, rippling out to their respective communities in startling, fascinating ways.
The story of Romeo and Juliet provides a pretty obvious undercurrent throughout the novel. Marion has fun with little allusions, such as the characters’ names and roles (R’s best “friend” is named M, short for Mercutio, and Julie’s best friend is a nurse). The tension of two people trying to overcome their warring social groups provides an unavoidable parallel to the original classic, but the book does its best not to take its Shakespearean resonance too seriously. There is a balcony scene, but even Julie herself finds it awkward to navigate and eventually abandons it. Moments like this remind the reader: this is not a story about love, but a story about how love fits into what it means to be alive, and what people will do for the chance to truly live.
On the surface level, “Warm Bodies” has a fairly straightforward plot. The real draw of the book is the development of its two main characters as they challenge their own conceptions of humanity and personhood. Marion’s prose is lovely and lyrical; certain passages read like poetry. He creates a wonderful tension in R, whose brain can still compose lofty thoughts though he can only barely remember how to string sentences together. For a good portion of the book, R is an eloquent mute, and his yearning to communicate is felt in every sentence.
Toward the end of the book—once the characters start interacting more with humans than with zombies—things start to fall apart. The conflict within Julie’s father comes across as a bit of a stretch, and Marion ends up sacrificing character to push his theme. I found the climax disappointing, not only in terms of action but in terms of a very important part of R’s development. The scene will look great in Summit Entertainment’s newly released adaptation of the movie, but its substance left something to be desired.
Conflict resolution aside, the book is a beautiful and fun read. Its subject material nudges the reader’s mind in an existential direction, making the book deliciously thought-provoking. “Warm Bodies” has more heart and brains than many other, livelier books that I’ve read in a long time.
(02/06/13 3:06pm)
This Valentine’s Day, don’t even bother going to the theater for a chick flick. The most romantic film of this year is six and a half minutes long and can be found online. “Paperman,” Disney’s newest animated short, combines hand-drawn animation with CGI to tell a story that is as beautiful as it is aesthetically breathtaking.
The story begins simply enough: a young office worker, living alone in a big city, runs into a pretty girl on his morning commute and promptly loses her as she boards a separate train to work. Having been unable to get her off of his mind all day, the young man (named George, according to the ending credits) is amazed and thrilled to see his perfect stranger (Meg) again—in the office building across from his. Desperate to get Meg’s attention before she slips away again, George begins folding his paperwork into airplanes to glide across the street to her window. However, as George discovers, it takes more than a few crisp folds to get the girl, and the story goes from sweet to wondrous as fate intervenes to bring two strangers into each other’s paths again.
“Paperman” is the directoral debut of Disney animator John Kahrs, who worked most recently on Disney’s “Tangled”, drew inspiration for the story from his own experience of living in New York City as a young animator. The idea simmered for several years before Kahrs turned it into a full-fledged animated short to premiere before “Wreck-It Ralph”, which came out in the fall. The sweet story, however, is only half of the triumph of this wonderful little film. The new animation style lends an element of nostalgia, purity and innocence as it hearkens back to the classic hand-drawn works of Disney’s earlier years.
Kahrs was reluctant to make the film a work of pure CGI after working with Disney animator Glen Keane on “Tangled”. Keane, who had worked on classic Disney films such as “The Little Mermaid”, created masterful sketches of the concept art. Kahrs felt that it would be “a real shame” to leave the sketches behind once the time came to move forward with the animation. Kahrs told Animation World Network in an interview that the desire to keep the “expressive line” of the hand-drawn sketches became “the impetus behind the production.”
The new program animators used for this film is called Meander, which Kahrs described as “a vector based drawing tool that gives the artist a lot of power to manipulate the line after you draw it.” As he told Jerry Black at Cartoon Brew, “It’s just like painting on the surface of the CG. It actually moves on a 2d layer that’s driven by the CG.”
Some of the closer shots in “Paperman” reveal just how exquisite this hybrid animation is. One can actually see the pencil lines in the contours of the characters’ faces and hands. The movement is fluid and natural. Although typical hand-drawn animation looks two-dimensional, the CG blend emphasizes depth and layers to make the short look like it really could be in 3D, even though it is not. Not to mention that CGI animation has always had great difficulty in getting hair to move in a natural way, as any special feature on any Pixar movie will indicate. It may seem like a small detail, but the blended animation of “Paperman” captures the soft, natural movement of hair perfectly, particularly when Meg is in motion or gets caught in a breeze.
Having covered the animation technique itself, the viewer can turn his or her eyes to the fantastic details that flesh out the black-and-white short. The instant connection George and Meg share is emphasized by the color scheme: the only splash of color in the whole short is the red of Meg’s lipstick, which ends up on one of George’s tax forms which he eventually turns into a paper airplane. Additionally—if you can bear to tear your eyes from the star-crossed lovers for a moment—you’ll notice that George and Meg are the only characters with distinct, appealing features. George’s boss and coworkers have blocky, hardened faces with eyes made opaque by glasses, and the strangers on the street have hardly any features at all. Meg and George, on the other hand, have wonderfully distinct features that make their faces even more expressive, running the gamut of emotion throughout the short.
To top it off, Christophe Beck’s score is simply wonderful: light, airy and at times so hopeful it is almost painful. It synchs perfectly with the emotional tone of the story at any given moment, completing the love story much the same way that the score for “Up” does in the first ten minutes of the film, which, like “Paperman”, tell the story without words.
Since Disney released “Paperman” on the Internet, I have been showing it to people nonstop. I have not met a single person who has not fallen in love with it at once, and most of my friends have watched it with me multiple times. One friend told me that she “grinned like a madwoman” throughout the whole thing, and another was moved to tears. I myself nearly cried the first time I saw “Paperman” before “Wreck-It Ralph” because I found the short so beautiful. “Paperman” is short and sweet, hopeful and gorgeous. As an animated film of any length, “Paperman” comes closer to perfection than anything I have ever seen.
(01/23/13 4:36pm)
Macon continues to improve its record for financial transparency.
For the third consecutive year, the city received a clean audit from Mauldin & Jenkins, a local auditing firm located in their office on Mulberry Street.
Macon’s financial reputation has not always been so clean.
In 2009 the city was cited for 30 instances of financial controls and fiscal issues in need of improvement.
Last year that number fell to 24, and this fiscal year—which closed on June 30, 2012—the number of cases cited dropped dramatically to a mere six.
According to the official statement released by City Hall, the areas of concern included four cases in the area of financial statement and two cases that were grant-related.
The document specifies that each of the findings were “procedural.”
Jim Gaines from the Telegraph reported in an article from Jan. 9 that the city intends to buckle down on the six findings to improve its financial operations.
Mauldin & Jenkins, per standard auditing procedure, sent a letter to the city along with its official findings.
In the letter, the firm mentions its areas of concern and suggests potential improvements.
Among other suggestions, the letter recommended that the city form a steering committee to handle information technology plans, that the city take pains to review transactions thoroughly and carefully and that a formal deposit policy be put in place to regulate the financial deposits the city is allowed to make.
Federal grant compliance also sent up a warning flag for the auditors, but according to firm partner Miller Edwards there was only one instance of a grant not following requirements.
Despite the six findings in the auditor’s report, Miller Edwards told the city council in a meeting that Macon has made great improvements in its financial operations.
The Telegraph reports that Council President James Timley expressed he was “impressed” with the city’s progress, particularly in the Economic & Community Development Department, which Timley told the Telegraph has been “atrocious in years past.”
Edwards also mentioned to the council that the city is doing well in terms of long-term debt.
The statement released by the city states: “The City has approximately $106 million in total long-term debt, and it has revenue sources to make those payments. This is considerably lower than other Cities this size, and is good for the current City of Macon government and the new, consolidated Macon-Bibb County government.”
Megan McMahon, the city’s Director of Finance, told the Telegraph that the city has already begun to implement at least half of the firm’s suggestions.