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(Hjp Hotly (Ear Mrri DIVE RECOMMENDS Album From the Vaults Ramones - Rocket to Russia: Rocket to Russia pretty much stays the course of the Ramones' debut but also has a fair share of timeless tracks such as" Sheena is a Punk Rocker." Movie Rental Pick: "Saved!":This movie is a smart religious satire that goes beyond obvious laughs. More importantly, it has a wheelchair-bound charac ter named Roland. Something Random: Proofreading. Events: Today Caltrop,Tiger Bear Wolf Reservoir | Show starts around 10 p.m. No cover, 21 and up, mem bers only. DirtySThirty, Social Memory Complex Wetlands | Chapel Hill-based hip hop. Doors at 8 p.m. Friday Erie Choir/Audubon Park Local 5061 Dual CD release party. 10 p.m. $lO. Saturday Jimmy and the Teasers The Cave | Garage rock, with The Cogburns opening. 10 p.m. Heartless Bastards Wetlands | Presented by Cat's Cradle. 9:30 p.m. $8 in advance, $lO at the door. Sunday Les Georges Leningrad Local 5061 Cantwell and Future Islands will open. 9 p.m. SB. Monday Hypnotist Tom DeLuca Memorial Hall | Sponsored by the Carolina Union Activities Board. 7 p.m. FREE. Cities Wetlands | Playing with So Many Dynamos, Eyes to Space and Grasshopper. 9:30 p.m. $6. Tuesday North Mississippi Allstars Cat's Cradle | Bluegrass music. Show at 9:15 p.m. sl6 in advance, $lB at the door. Wednesday Now It's Overhead Schoolkids Records | Get a preview of the band's show at Local 506 scheduled for 9 p.m.the same night, with North Elementary Allstars and The Never opening. 6 p.m. FREE. Zach Galifianakis Cat's Cradle | Stand-up comedy with music from The Explorers Club to start the show. 9 p.m. $lO in advance, sl2 at the door. Movies in the Union: "Snakes on a Plane," starring Samuel L. Jackson. Our favorite "Snakes" parody joke:"Serpents on a Chariot,"starring Charlton Hes ton. 7 p.m. Friday, 9 p.m. Saturday. "An Inconvenient Truth," produced by Al Gore, about global warming. 9 p.m. Friday, 7 p.m. Saturday. Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu. Carolina performing arts* o .at Mi w tin ill: Hall (N *'L „ Company Ea Sola Drought & Rain Vol. 2 November 16 at 7:3opm I November 17 at 8:00pm EYES TO SPACE: ROBOT ROCK If Eyes to Space has its way, pocket protectors and Coke bottle glasses will abound Monday night in the audience of Wetlands. The local band offers a sci-fi brand of electronic rock with nerd-pop sensibilities, and its music is both homemade and sophisticated like a Battlebot made for dance, not destruction. Bassist Wendy Spitzer sat down with Diversions staff writer Trevor Thornton to talk about the band. Set phasers to Rock. DIVE: Describe your music. Wendy Spitzer: we like to call ourselves dance music for the robot intelligentsia. More specific than that is a mix of new wave, nerd-pop and prog rock. Those are the three main genres we draw from. A lot of our songs are about sci ence and humanity. People who are interested in those topics might like our music. DIVE: Who are the robot intel ligentsia? WS: That would be our target audience of nerds, people who want to have a good time. A lot of computer-science people are really into our band. Engineering students. Anybody who's inter ested in having good time. ‘The Queen lends warmer eye to stoic monarch Helen Mirren an Academy shoe-in BY WILLIAM FONVIELLE DIVE FILM CRITIC All who see “The Queen” feel so compelled to lavish praise upon Helen Mirren that to not do so right off the bat feels like killing time. So here it is: Yes, for her por trayal of Queen Elizabeth 11, Mirren’s eventual Best Actress nomination is as solid a lock as Oscar prognosticators have this year. It is a weighty, spellbind ing performance, one that, with a mere turn of the head, demands our attention, and it does that with quiet respect. But this isn’t the queen, it’s “The Queen,” and it’s a bigger movie than any one performance can allow. Apart from Mirren, this is a rich, dignified affair that feels restrained in the good sense of the word (that is, it isn’t hollow, but simply doesn’t feel the need to lay all its cards on the table). In its play-by-play account of the week following Princess Diana’s unexpected death, “The Queen” represents a clash between English values of old and new, between the royal family’s Diversions DIVE: How does your aware ness of classical music fit in with Eyes to Space's rock? WS: I and the drummer were both music majors at UNC,and all four of us have had a lot of musical training.lt helps us pull off some of the more difficult elements. We write sophisticated music, but the goal is to write really good music that's really fun and easy to listen to. DIVE: "Eyes to Space." Is it a band name, a mission statement or a mandate to your listeners? WS: On a very surface level, just a band name. As far as a mission statement or a directive to others, the looking toward the horizon, we're always trying to do that mu sically in hopes that in five years people will understand our music. If you're feeling like you want to read more into it, I encourage you to do so. We do have a lot of songs about space travel and time travel. DIVE: Do you have any serious die-hard fans? WS: We played a battle of the bands in Wilkesboro and we won "Best Instrumentalists,” which I guess means that we played our instruments the best. The great est part of that show was that a group of teenagers who didn't fit in came and were screaming. And there's a small possibility that they're going to host an alternate prom, where they're going to rent out a skating rink and have every sturdy refusal to publicly respond to the tragedy and Tony Blair’s willingness to invite cameras (and in turn the entire world) to the memorial. Whether the movie sympa thizes more with the queen or with Blair is more than any one viewer can say. It certainly por trays Blair as an original, capable leader who is in tune with what his people want and knows how to provide it. But it also doesn’t lose sight of the fact that the queen was born into a life of rigid tradition. She didn’t have a choice in the mat ter as Diana did. And during that week in August 1997 when she turned a deaf ear to her follow ers’ mournful outcries, it wasn’t meant to be a sort of apathetic “Let them eat cake.” It was just that she didn’t know what other food to provide. And that’s where the true power of “The Queen” lies: in its adamant refusal to feed us easy answers. It’s rare for a movie to be truly intelligent and rarer still for it to trust the audience’s intelligence. But director Stephen The UNC Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity PRESENTS Can Schools Make a Difference in the 21st Century? Education and Workforce Preparation for Youth in America's Margins Can public schools in America make a difference in the lives of low-income youth as they make the transition from school to the workplace? This panel will bring together leaders in academia and the education and public policy community to debate how and if education could make a difference'in the shaping of equitable, productive economic futures for disadvantaged youth. The panel will be moderated by Deborah Hicks, Visiting Scholar in Women's Studies at Duke University, and Lynne Vernon-Feagans, William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of Education at UNC. Senator John Edwards, Director of the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity, will serve as the lead questioner of the panelists. Panelists include: Larry Aber, Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Policy, NYU's Steinhardt School. Annette Lareau, Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland Bill McNeal, Executive Director, North Carolina Association of School Administrators Carol Stack, Professor Emeritus, University of California- Berkeley Rachel Tompkins, President of the Rural School and Community Trust George Wood, Director of the Forum for Education and Democracy This event is __ „ _ stse fffr UNC No registration SCHOOL OP LAW y| is required. one skate around in a circle with us playing in the middle. DIVE: What is Eyes to Space's opinion on Pluto being categorized as a dwarf planet? WS: I think it's kind of sad. Pluto was out there doing its thing and it was really, really far and everybody kind of knew it wasn’t a planet anyway. But we all grew up in elementary school thinking it was a planet. I kind of feel bad because it was so tiny. DIVE: What planet is Eyes to Space most like including Pluto? WS: Mars, it's close but still far. It's rocky and there might have been life there. DIVE: Frontman Jay Cartwright plays a homemade keytar. What’s the story behind that? WS: It's a keyboard strapped on like a guitar. Jay thought that human-made keytars were kind of cheeseball so he made his own. It's got a strap so he can jump around and perform with it. He controls the volume with a dimmer switch, and it's spray painted metallic silver and it's got neon orange Velcro and purple cables and stuff. DIVE: Working at the UNC law school by day, being a cosmic rock er by night, when do you sleep? WS: It's definitely a Clark Kent/ Superman dichotomy of identity. It is a pretty busy life. DIVE: Do you sleep in a sleep ing bag attached to the wall? MOViEREVIEW THE QUEEN Frears achieves both, and as mov iegoers, we couldn’t ask for a greater compliment. Of course, to do such, it makes sacrifices on other levels. As well crafted as “The Queen” is, it appeals more on the intellectual level than the emotional level, always keeping us somewhat at arm’s length. Even the scene where the queen privately breaks down in tears because of Diana’s death, which should have been an easy emo tional release, is diluted through Frears’ decision to film Mirren from the back only. We can hear her cry, but we can’t actually see anything. This is such an obviously delib erate decision that it can’t be dis missed off the cuff as a mistake on Frears’ part. The question becomes his intention in structuring the movie this way. Perhaps it’s to clearly illustrate the stodgy trap pings of the Old British lifestyle. And if that’s the case, then job well done. This isn’t meant to decry the r * jUflL wßmmm pa . B If / COURTESY OF EYES TO SPACE Eyes to Space will play music for the robot intelligentsia Monday at Wetlands with So Many Dynamos and Cities. Show starts at 9:30 p.m. WS: I don't actually envy the life of an astronaut. They're not out there having an astronaut party with astronaut ice cream and astronaut daiquiris or something. They're mainly just trying to fix the space station. DIVE: Are you excited about the Wetlands? WS: Yeah it should be a re ally good time. Its going to be a pretty rocking night for a Monday. DIVE: What do you think of the Chapel Hill scene? WS: It’s a fantastic benefit of living in this area. I feel person ally that it's gotten better. There's a lot of really different music and good music. Everyone goes to see the big indie bands that come through the Cat's Cradle, SHBBK ' ** ’ Etaj& ~4jp^*^ COURTESY OF MIRAMAX FILMS Helen Mirren turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as Queen Elizabeth II in Stephen Frears' 'The Queen,' an ambiguous account of the royal family. film (well, OK, in a way it is). It’s just to illustrate what you’re get ting into. With “The Queen,” your intellect will be given a good mas sage, while apart from Mirren’s tour-de-force performance, you’ll probably walk away feeling rela- Brand New 20 Bed Salon, Largest in the Area! • Brand New Ulh.i High 1 1 ' ,' Bi'ils • Medium Pressure Beds and Booths V* • Soilless Express Airbrush Tunning • Open / Days u Week • UNC Students show your DESIGNER SKIN UNC ID for a discount ghh. I Sctife&c SaCavi 105 A Rams Plaza • 968-3377 V, Goodfellows LIVE DJ No Cover IFnMaiy <& Sfflttmirdlaiy Great Specials & No Cover Itemi Everything 14 Off *3 Cover ' ; • • TEWcdlffly 1 * r 7 Tea & Trivia •$3 LITs a W®dbi®o(ilaiy Karaoke & $8 Rude Earle Pitchers thursday, november 9,2006 but I feel like there are local shows that are just as good, per formance-wise. DIVE: if you were a mode of transportation, what kind would you be and why? WS: One of those tourist buses that turns into a boat when it hits the waterfront. It's really stupid that it exists, and yet it's still very dangerous. And you get this feel ing that you think it's one thing but it's really another.That would be my analogy for Eyes to Space. You think it's just that thing, but if you look a little closer it's about to turn into a boat. And there could be a blazing inferno of destruc tion involved in the transition, but you still want to watch. Contact the Diversions Editor atdive@unc.edu. tively unmoved. But that’s “The Queen.” Accept it for what it isn’t and respect it for what it is. Contact the Diversions Editor at dive@unc.edu. 7
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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