when camelot came to vegas | vegas seven magazine | july 4-10
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As the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination approaches, a look back at his colorful and complex relationship with Sin City. Plus: America's Hottest Day; Beer and Baseball; Patriotic Party Nights.TRANSCRIPT
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SATURDAY, JULY 6
SPONSORED BY
Mandalay Bay Box Of ce 702.632.7580 mandalaybay.com | 800.745.3000 ticketmaster.com
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NOW SLICING. Heres where youll findpizza by award-winning Chef Shawn McClain, beer by microbreweries, and an atmosphereby ARIA. Whether its 2 pm or 2 am.
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EvEnt
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[ upcoming ]
July 14: Las Vegas Cupcake Bakeoff at Suncoast Grand Ballroom (BakeLV.com) July 18-21: Las Vegas Film Festival at LVH (LVFilmFest.com)
Red, White & BReWEven though the mercury rose to 114 on June
29, hundreds of thirsty patriots still made
their way to the Clark County Amphitheater
for KXTE-FMs Red Wine and Brew Fest. The
crowd of about 1,500 kept cool in the searing
heat thanks to samples of more than 65 variet-
ies of craft beer, as well as wine and cocktails.
Memphis Championship Barbecue provided
the bites to accompany the brews, while local
acts American Cream, Beau Hodges Band and
Parade of Lights rocked the stage. Befitting
the patriotic theme, the funds raised at this
inaugural event benefited American Legion
Department of Nevada.
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THOUGHT
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I HAVE DRIVEN a car on Fremont Street, from Las Vegas Bou-levard down to Main, in the way of Hunter S. Thompson and James Bond. There was a time, believe it or not, when you could do such a thingdrive your car west through Glitter Gulch, with the casinos leaning in close to spill their illuminated promises through your windshield. You could do this without having to swerve around throngs of tourists, kiosks selling needless things and feral Smurfs. It was a wonderful experience, even if you were tempted to roll up your windows.The modern-day Fremont
Street Experience is a differ-ent animal. On the one hand, tourists seem to love its light canopy and outdoor mall, and Im happy that they do; I want the resorts of Glitter Gulch to stay in business. Im less fond of the Experience, but thats fine; if I want a more local-ized Fremont experience, theres always the Fremont East Entertainment Dis-trictCommonwealth, Insert Coin(s) and so onready to serve. In a way, Fremont East is what Glitter Gulch once was; its even become home to the tech inspection for the Mint 400 auto race, once a Glitter Gulch tradition.Until recently, I was fne with
the Fremont Street Experience being what it is and Fremont East being what it is. And then, like a bad dream, rose Slotzilla.I dont think I can begin to
tell you how much I dislike this six-story, slot machine-shaped tower, built for the purpose of dispatching zipline riders through the airspace of the canopy to a smaller, equally unsightly tower deeper inside the Experience. But Ill give it a try. Slotzilla is the nail in the coffn, the one last thing we needed to completely destroy
one of Americas great scenic byways. I guess Ive been hold-ing onto some vague hope that Fremont, the street, would returnor at the least, that the canopy would come down and leave the pedestrian plaza, or vice versa. Slotzilla means no, uh-uh, not so much.And Im not sure Id feel dif-
ferently if I didnt hate the size and shape of the thing (but I do) or if it werent a monument to a trend that will almost certainly peak and begin to
decline in the near future. My problem with Slotzilla is well, lets just say its kind of a feng shui thing.Lets say youre a tourist at
the Fremont Street Experi-ence. Youve got your bub-blegum-favored yard marg in hand and youre ready to do some exploring. You look to the east and see Slotzilla, wedged between Neonopo-lis and the Fremont Street Experience. Maybe you beat your chest, scream YOLO!
in a manner not unlike that of an idiot, and decide to ride the thing. Or maybe you had a bad experience oncelike your girlfriend left you for a zipline, or somethingand you walk in the other direction. Either way, Fremont Street ended for you, right there. As far as youre concerned, Fremont East doesnt exist.Now, say youre a young
hipster standing on Fremont East, holding the leash on the llama or whatever you kids do.
You look at the back of Slotzilla and nod approvingly, knowing that this great wall is keeping the zombies corralled. But then you look around you at the clip-art-style neon signs in the middle of the street, the jaun-diced banners showing some model drinking a martini and the palm trees that afford absolutely no daytime shade, and you say, Hey, if were no longer an extension of the Fre-mont Street Experience brand, why is all this crap still up? Seriously, Im looking at
Slotzilla every way I know how, and I cant see it as anything but a spite wall between the Experience and the street of bar and restaurants that is, like it or not, quickly becoming Vegas hottest entertainment block. Slotzilla is, plainly and simply, a self-created (zip)line of demarcation to keep tourists in and locals out.But if thats what the Experi-
ence wants to do, I guess I wish them well. I have friends under that canopy: The D, the Nug-get, the Golden Gate and oth-ers. Ill keep patronizing those establishments as if they were part of Downtown Las Vegas, and not just storefronts inside some hermetically sealed, jury-rigged Adventuredome. And if I ever steal a wistful look up the street and imagine what itd be like to drive Fremont one last time, Ill just, I dunno, jam a ballpoint pen into my leg or something. Negative reinforcement.And I look forward to seeing
what happens when Im walking the other way and a tourist asks me what lies beyond the mighty Slotzilla. Ill describe a place with rooftop bars and espresso bars, lined with shady trees growing into unrestricted airspace. And best of all, Ill say, its got some nice neon signs, and you can check them out from your car. Both directions.
The Zipline Of DemarcationWeve got a big, hideous tower clotting the path from Fremont East to the
Fremont Street Experience. Hooray for connectivity!
By Geoff Carter
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NatioNal
iN late 2011, a slender Brook-lyn resident named Tim Pool roamed downtown Manhat-tan, seemingly recording every minute of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Pool, an independent journalist, would use his smartphone to live-stream the demonstra-tions, sometimes for as long as 19 continuous hours, earning himself the nickname The
Media Messenger of Zuccotti Park in Time.As the protests escalated, it
became increasingly diffcult for Pool to capture the civil disobedience from eye level. He yearned for an unhindered viewa higher vantage point, like from the sky.The fact that police would
obstruct cameras just sort of put in our minds that we might
be in a situation where you cant get a good shot because theres a wall or a fence or something, said Pool, now 27.Enter the occucopter
a modifed drone of Pools creation, built from a Parrot AR, one of the frst consumer-oriented drones, which hit the marketplace in 2010 and was available for purchase on Amazon for $299.
Drones, also commonly called unmanned aerial ve-hicles (UAVs), differ from the remote-controlled toy helicop-ters of childhood in that they operate via onboard comput-ers under the direction of a pilot, who is on the ground. The Parrot AR Drone has onboard technology to follow preprogrammed instructions and automatically stabilize itself against wind.A lightweight quad-rotor,
Pools drone resembled noth-ing so much as a bike seat, and, with its palette of neon colors, it looked like it had been plucked straight from the pages of SkyMall. Unlike the junk found in an in-fight magazine, however, it actually workedand with the addition of a cam-
era, the occucopter was given further functionality.Shooting 50 feet into the air
and zipping around at speeds of up to 10 mph, the occucop-ter buzzed above the heads of the protesters. For many, both within and beyond Zuccotti Park, this marked their frst-ever encounter with a drone. Even the mainstream media was fascinated, focusing on the devices nonmilitary capa-bilities, as Pool earned press mentions across the globe in outlets such as The Guardian and Wired magazine.Being a drone, its got a
huge novelty factor, and a lot of people are really excited, Pool said. They think that this is like the game-changer, its this great revolutionary thing.
Game of DronesDoes New York City have an unmanned aerial vehicle problem?
By Jordan ValinskyThe New York Observer
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Nightlife
You were one of 2012s break-through artists. Whos your pick for breakthrough artist of 2013?I think it must be either Dyro
or Krewella.
You teased your Krewella collaboration Legacy at Coachella. Hows that coming?I met the Krewella team in
Hawaii last year, and I thought they played an amazing set. I was really impressed with the way they did the vocals, and how everything came together with the three of them. I sent them the Legacy instrumental and they wrote a top line right on it in just a few days and it seemed to merge just perfect. Im really happy with how it sounds right now, we have good hype around the song. We got more than
100,000 plays in just one day!
You started as a drummer. How does that affect your ap-proach to music today?It kind of developed my inter-
est for music in general. The drumming background showed itself when I did the remix for Green Velvets Flash, because that was all about the drums and percussion. The platform that I created right now for protocol and for my own brand, really ev-erything is based on the interest that started at a young age.
Your single with Avicii, I Could Be the One, has been a massive crossover success with sustained hype. Whats special about this record?I think we are lucky that it
got so big and it got to No. 1 in
the U.K. I think that helps a lot. It was on the Billboard charts as well. So, like you mentioned, it keeps the hype a little bit longer. Actually, we produced it in 2011, so its out there for two years already, but people just only know it for like a year, not even. So, its kind of funny, for me, its a really old track, its a classic for me already.
What was it like to work on Right Now with Rihanna?I think its a dream of every
producer to work with an artist of that profle. When I met her, I was really impressed by her presence. She was really kind to everyone, friendly and so profes-sional. Everyone I met after who showed up a little arrogant, I kind of ignored. At this moment, the Queen of Pop is not arrogant,
not at all. I saw that everyone who is huge in the industry is not arrogant; they are the most humble people. So whenever someone is arrogant, they have to make up for something.
You also worked with Nervo on Like Home. Whos hotter: Rihanna or the Nervo sisters?Its actually comparing white
bread with nine-grain. [Laugh-ing] One is dark and one is white, you know? If I really had to choose, Nervo is more a family to me. So, I would choose Rihanna.
You were playing Symphon-ica in DJ sets for a year before you decided to release it. How do you know when its time to release a new track?Its not like that we do that on
purpose. Most of the time we have such a full schedule that we have to move things up. But sometimes you play the single already for a year. Thats what happens with a lot of artists. A lot of people dont know, either, that the song was produced for a year already before it actually releases. Its just a process, and
sometimes you just want to keep changing things and fnalizing things until youre really happy.
Between the hits, the chart success and the collaborations, whats been the highlight of your young career?Working with Rihanna was
huge for me. Playing Tomor-rowland was a really, really cool thing for me and also a highlight. EDC, once again, I have to men-tion. Playing Light yesterday was a new highlight of my career. Ive never experienced a club like that. It was just insane. They few meliterallyto the DJ booth. It was next-level stuff, so that made a big impact on me.
Youve said that your favorite part of DJing is when you re-lease a new track and it goes off in the club. What is the biggest challenge?To have a track sound good
everywhereon the small speak-ers, big speakers, your car radio, thats something thats really hard to do. And it always will be, because the mixing is the hard-est part of making a song.
He Could Be the OneWherefore art Romero? Why, hes backstage with Vegas Seven at EDC
By Sam Glaser
DJ/proDucer Nicky romero stunned many in 2012 when he debuted at No. 17 as one of DJ Mags highest new entries ever. The latest in a proud line of great Dutchmen, Romero is currently riding arguably the most impressive sequence of collaborations in the industry. He spoke with Vegas Seven back-stage right after his main-stage set June 21 at the Electric Daisy Carnival.
For the complete interview with Nicky Romero back-stage at EDC, visit VegasSeven.com/NickyRomero.
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palms poolThe palms
[ Upcoming ]
July 4 IndustryBarbecue
July 8 CabanasforaCause
July 12 Waleperforms
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
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PARTIES
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WET REPUBLICMGM Grand
[ UPCOMING ]
July 4 SteveAokispins
July 5 TommyTrashspins
July 6 Tistospins
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THE ACTThe Palazzo
[ UPCOMING ]
July 4 Presto One spins
July 17 End of the World Party
July 18 Rebel Bingo
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LAVOThe Palazzo
[ UPCOMING ]
July 5 DJSkratchyspins
July 6 DJGustospins
July 7 DJVicespins
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GALLERYPlanet Hollywood
[ UPCOMING ]
July 6 Official GSP after-fight party
July 8 Perfect 12
July 13 DJ Felli Fel spins
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TRENDSPOTTING
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IS IT REALLY any wonder why the cupcake trend has found love in the wedding circuit? With the surge of cupcake shops opening all over the country, it was only a matter of time before brides swooned. And for good reason: Cupcakes give brides and grooms the ability to personalize the experience with different cake favors, frostings and embellishments, allows for dietary considerations (gluten-free, vegan, nondairy) and offers portability and versatility without sacrifcing the aesthetics. And creative couples can make just as much of a statement as the traditional tiered wedding cake.No one knows this
better than recently engaged executive pastry chef Tammy Alana at the Palms French restau-rant, Aliz. Alana offers brides who hold their re-ceptions at Aliz her own version of the wedding cupcake: the Cakelet, a dainty, delicate, 3-inch-by-3-inch miniature version of your dream wedding cakeor cakes, Alana says with an air of whimsy. Delicious as they are precious, Cakelets can come in vanilla, chocolate, lemon or red velvet favors with fllings such as chocolate mousse, lemon curd or Bavarian custard, cov-ered in chocolate-cara-mel glaze, buttercream, white or dark chocolate velvet Pick one, or pick them allthe options and combinations are almost endless. Sometimes big dreams
come in small, cream cheese-frosted packages.
Something Bold, Something NewWedding cakes are tiny, just for you at Aliz
By Kate Stowell
Speak to Alizes wedding specialist at 951-7000.
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drinking
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[ Scene StirS ]
The Final Four, BaTTle oF The Bars and somm, The FilmIf you heard an animal-like howl ring
through the Valley last week, it was prob-
ably just me nursing a wicked hangover
after the five rounds of the Las Vegas Best
Bartender Competition held June 25 in the
Alchemy Room at Wirtz Beverage Nevada.
The daylong gauntlet kicked off with a
40-question exam. Then came the speed
round, which tested the bartenders on the
accuracy of six cocktails made against
the clock and evaluated right down to the
straw. During the pour test, their freepours
were measured for volume accuracy.
Points were also awarded and docked for
hygiene, composure, neatness and style.
Six contestants moved forward into the
mixology round, where they could choose
anything from behind the bar to create and
name a great cocktail on the spot. Then
came the hangover-inducing part, when
the final four took turns bartending for we
judgeswho, incidentally, made complete
asses of ourselves, behaving as would only
the worst possible customers everto see
who could stand the heat.
And now its time to celebrate and
crown one bartender the victor! Come to
Commonwealth on July 10 to cheer on
Downtown Cocktail Rooms Kevin Gorham,
Centrals Michael Przydzial, Vespers Roger
Gross and Hakkasans Tim Weigel, all of
whom will be guest-tending their hearts out
from 7-10 p.m.. At 9:30 p.m., well not only
announce Las Vegas Best Bartender, but
also the Peoples Choice for that evening.
In other news, patrons of nine local
barsSteiners Pub, T-Bird Lounge, Rum
Runner, Bogeys, Boulevard Bar & Grill,
Rockys, Torrey Pines Pub, Bentleys and
Gilligans Hideawaywill go head to head
for $5,000 cash on Battle of the Bars, a
new locally produced TV quiz show hosted
by KLUCs Chet Buchanan. The 4-week
show will air on KVVU-TV Channel 5 late
Friday nights, from 12:30 a.m.1:00 a.m.
July 6, July 13, July 20 and the finals on
July 27. If all goes well, executive producer
Mark Richards hopes to add nine bars to the
mix for a total of 18.
Now, clear your evening, pop the cork on
something delicious and absolutely freak
out in your seat while you watch four Mas-
ter Sommelier candidates grind out their
last precious days of study time with flash
cards and so, so much swirling, sniffing
and spitting in Somm, the 2012 documen-
tary directed by Jason Wise. I attended an
industry screening at South Point on June
24, courtesy of Southern Wine & Spirits,
in a theater filled with somms and wine
industry professionals, many of whom have
attempted the exam, some more than once.
After watching the tears (both of joy and
crushing defeat) I have a renewed respect
for sommeliers. Cheers to all the cork
dorks, winos, oenophiles and grape nuts!
You make the wine world go round. X.W.
Bringing Sexy Back low on calories, but big on favor. Thats what Wynn Resorts property mixologist Patricia Richards had in mind when she combined citrus and cucumber to create one of the most refreshing cocktails of summer. One of her core principles at Wynn Resorts is to know her clientele and what they will like. And what they like is to party day and night. Situated next to Surrender and Encore Beach Club, Wynns hip Asian hot spot Andreas is keenly aware of those needs, and especially the desires of its female clientele to look good in both bikinis and party dresses. With that party aesthetic in mind, Rich-ards uses Skinny Girl tangerine vodka, Solerno blood orange liqueur and fresh lime juice and tops it with Mr. Q Cumber soda for a full-favored-but-lower-calorie long drink. A native of Vancouver, British Columbia, Richards celebrates her 10th Las Vegas summer in August, and is bringing sexy back one skinny, sexy little cocktail at a time.
For Patricia Richards recipe for Bringing Sexy Back, check out VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.
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Gastro Fare. Nurtured Ales. Jukebox Gold.
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rooms, an attendant stationed at the entrance to each. You enter the frst room as a lighting program, taking 20 minutes to complete, puts each room through a continuous sequence. Two colors always play against the other. In the frst room, the walls might be green, but the colors evolve. Youre in the belly of a well of light, swal-lowed whole. You are not allowed to touch the walls, denying you a tactile experience.The disorientation is stirring, emotional. You
might even cry.Part of the dislocation is due to the rooms
modifcations. There are no right angles; the joints connecting foor and wall are curved. Standing in the space, you feel like youre foating inside a cumulus of color. Perception is thwart-ed; you cant discern where walls begin and end. Physically untethered, spatially unmoored, you dont know the limits of the area, or if youre sup-posed to draw them yourself. You walk forward a pace or two or three, and
step onto the edge of the second room. Here things are more dramatic because of an addi-tional drop-off that you are tempted to take. Be-fore you can, the attendant stands near the edge to let you know where the edge is so that you dont step off. Like Las Vegas, the environment is controlled, policed, giving the illusion of com-plete sensory freedom, when in fact every move you make, every gesture you offer, is monitored, keeping you in check. You have pierced the veil of heaven, but your name is not yet on Gods list.You have no sense of whether the room ends
1,000 feet or 10 feet in front of you. Sure, you can perceive that the foor eventually stops, but just how far is it to the other side? It will remain a mystery. Meanwhile, a cloud of green or pink hovers before you. You look back into the previ-ous space and feel lost, locked inside one of Mark Rothkos Color Field paintings, all fatness, with no central focus.Colors change, then stay fxed, then change
again. Its time to leave. Dazed, you seem to coast toward the exit, drifting through dream waters to return to the real world of concrete and steel. Like the ancient Greek mythological fgure of Or-pheus, you steal a glance back at the illuminated rooms, but there is no Eurydice to banish to the gloam. Only smiling attendants, expressing hope that you enjoyed Akhob. Turrell takes the concept of the Las Vegas ap-
plication of lightto dazzle tourists with neonand transforms it into an epic if minimalist meditation, a sensory-depriving isolation tank, a science-fction zero-gravity chamber, where we are forced to confront our nearing extinction and the fnite beauty of our lives. Instead of us-ing light and color to distract for the purpose of entertainment, Turrell employs them to sharpen our interior concentration, to remind us that we are born into radiance and that we will likely ex-pire into it, too. Shutting out the world and suc-cumbing to pure perception is its own reward. What Turrell offers is a gift, reallythe realization that private perception is superior to shared external reality. It is also alienating, sure. After all, grasping the world as a personal perceptual fction rather than a shared social feld is the very defnition of an existential crisis. Or psychosis.Turrell extends a powerful, if somewhat
problematic, souvenir. But it is one that, should you get an opportunity to experience it, you will keep inside you long after the tourist trinkets of the Strip are trashed and forgotten. And taken together with his public artwork at Crystals station, you have an opportunity to bask in two major works in Las Vegas by a major artist. Both are gratifying, but one is transcendent.
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A show begins. A life ends.Such was the tragically surreal night
in the otherwise entertainingly sur-real world of Cirque du Soleil, which on June 29 offcially unveiled its new Michael Jackson ONE at Mandalay Bay while over at the MGM Grands K, acrobat Sarah Guyard-Guillot lost her life in a horrifc fall in front of an audience.Authorities will
investigate and Cirque has pledged cooperation into the frst onstage fatality in its 29-year-history, an incredible beat-the-odds statisticeven though Guyard-Guillot was not a statistic, but a person, an artist and a 31-year-old mother of two children, ages 8 and 5.(Earlier in the week, on June 26,
Cirque experienced a bad omen when an airborne performer in ONE crashed to the stage, fortunately suffering only a mild concussion. Show offcials said he is expected to return.)Reportedly, the French-born
Guyard-Guillot (nicknamed Sasoun), a veteran K cast member, was suspended from the shows elevated vertical stage near the end of the pro-duction when she slipped out of her safety wire and plunged 50 feet into a pit under the performers. Death so young is a tragedy on the
most basic levels. Tragic that she lost her life. Tragic that her family and friends lost someone they cherished. Especially tragic that her children will grow up without her love.Nothing mitigates that. Yet the death
of an artist in pursuit of art is a more complex idea. It speaks to the quality of your life, rather than the quantity of your years, and why, depending on your outlook, the former is a better measurement of satisfaction and ac-complishment than the latter.
Upon hearing the sad news, I thought of the results of a Gallup sur-vey released last week that said 70 per-cent of Americans were disengaged from their jobsi.e., at best they are bored by them, at worst they loathe them. Given that this artist spent 22 of her 31 years as an acrobat its fair to as-
sume she was among the fortunate 30 per-cent. Who, after all, would devote their life to an art form so beautiful, so creative, and so dangerous, if
not out of genuine passion?At the risk of over-dramatizing and
overstatement, Id suggest that the staggering 70 percent of people who mentally and emotionally disconnect from what they do for 40, 60, even 80 hours a week die a tiny bit each day, while this dedicated artist lived every minute of those same hours, days, months and years.Surely she had problems and sor-
rows like we all do. Yet when you recalibrate the math along those lines, her life likely reads as longer and fuller than the facts in an obitu-ary can convey. Strange as the reference seems, I
fashed back to Patrick Swayzes dare-devil/criminal surfer character in Point Break, who said: Its not tragic to die doing what you love. And then does.Hopefully for those who loved her,
and for the millions who loved watch-ing her though they didnt know her name, it will ease the grief just a little to think that Sarah Guyard-Guillot died doing what she loved.Thank you for the joy of your art-
istry, Sarah. Rest in peace, dear lady.
To make donations for Guyard-Guillots children and to share memories, visit ForSasoun.com.
RemembeRing the joy of ARtistRy in the news of deAth
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Movies
A&E
With so feW women afforded the opportunity to steer the course of a movieany movie, onscreen or offeven a formulaic vehicle such as The Heat arrives as a surprise and a relief.At its sharpest, The Heat
actually moves and banters like a comedy, with sharply timed and edited dialogue sequences driven by a couple of pros ensuring a purpose-ful sense of momentum. The story places Sandra Bullock, playing a fastidious FBI agent, as an opposing force to Melissa McCarthys brazen Boston cop. Mostly theyre funny because of the material; elsewhere, theyre funny in spite of it.The good stuffs in the frst
80 minutes. Screenwriter Katie Dippold (MADtv, Parks and Rec-reation) and director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids and plenty of good television series before that) eventually settle for action-movie clichs and locales (oh, that old abandoned warehouse full of venal criminal scum) without a fresh take.The violence in the fnal
third becomes a drag. One of these days, well get a buddy-cop lark with the nerve to tone down the sadism; here, its a threatened-torture scene, following an emergency tracheotomy performed at a Dennys. And product place-ment has gotten pretty strange at the movies lately. Between the pulverized IHOP in Man of Steel and the blood-spattered Dennys in The Heat, its like: How bout eating in tonight?But we must appreciate the
payoffs where we fnd them. Bullock has been hereabouts before in Miss Congeniality, but this is one of her best recent performances, full of pinpoint details and quirks. McCarthy, already an audience favorite thanks to Bridesmaids and Iden-tity Thief, is learning to modulate her act and fnd variations on the theme of volcanic bully. She was born, in all probability, with the ability to slay an audience and detonate a punch line. But shes actress enough to learn
the value of variety within a comfortable persona.In The Heat were closer to
full-on action mode, akin to 48 Hrs. or Lethal Weapon territory than a spoofy affair on the order of the Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg movie The Other Guys. Bullocks New York-based agent is bucking for a promotion. She travels to Boston to nail a drug lord. (Were done with the plot now, even if the flm takes a full two hours to deal with it.) Mc-Carthys the tetchy local blow-hard with a badge, a woman tough enough to put her own brother behind bars. As this odd couple learns to work together, the audience learns to forgive the scenes that dont quite work (an undercover as-signment in a nightclub, where Bullocks character must fake skankiness) and swing with those that do (typically the off-plot riffs, allowing the actresses some breathing room).A couple of examples of
scenes that work? At one point, McCarthy bounces a little plastic Tic Tac box off her police chiefs noggin, and the way director Feig flms itcalmly, without undue emphasismakes the gag even more successful. At another point, Bullock and McCarthy are in the frenemy stage of their working relationship, and McCarthy caps some fb or another with the line: America thanks you. Bullocks reply: And I it. Most buddy-cop movies, whether their focus is on explosions and stabbings or, in this case, explosions and stabbings plus some jokes, have zero facility when it comes to verbal fourishes along these lines. The Heat may overstay its welcome (a contractual obliga-tion in Hollywood comedies these days), but I suspect audi-ences will take to it.There. That takes care of the
industrys semiannual invest-ment in the other gender. Now we can get back to The Hangover 4: Whatever.
The Heat (R)
Hot CopsBullock and McCarthy snap and crackle
in The Heat
By Michael PhillipsTribune Media Services
McCarthy and Bullock turn the male buddy-cop genre upside down.
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