The first installation in Chantal Akerman’s new exhibition in the List Visual Arts Center presents an imposing blockade of television screens: placed in triptychs throughout the room, one has to weave and sidestep between the televisions to get through.

The screens depict the dissolution of the Soviet bloc through cascades of image and sound, a somber tour of Eastern European cityscapes and street corners, fragmented from Akerman’s 1995 film D’est: Au bord de la fiction (From the East: Bordering on Fiction). Moving between the screens, it’s difficult to avoid repeatedly coming face-to-face with the images, as the continuous drone of the street scenes follows you into every corner. 

“Moving through Time and Space” is great at creating scenes like this: sparse, dark rooms that allow the abstract bits of film to transform the space, moving it to a different time, and investing us with a different emotion. But what the exhibition really does best is what its title suggests: moving through the rooms takes us to different temporal scenes, but ones that link together, playing with history and memory. 

The five projects in the exhibition tackle diverse themes, that still effortlessly relate, from a meditation on race, nature, and history in the American south (Sud, 1999) to a depiction of illegal immigration on the Mexico-Arizona border (From the Other Side, 2002).

From the East: Bordering on Fiction and From the Other Side have similar arrangements of television screens but create two entirely distinct spaces. From the East, with aged, relic-like television sets showing grainy depictions of Eastern Europe, feels abstract, aged, and slightly unreal. From the Other Side, feels insistently current, manifesting our contemporary concerns about immigration on modern flat-screens, accompanied by the sounds of helicopters and radio transmissions.

Sud is particularly powerful in its examination of a horrific, racially-motivated act of violence. The project only presents one large screen — and also the most concrete narration in the exhibition — but watching an interview that quietly recounts an act so brutal and yet so recent, poses one of the most overpowering scenes in the exhibition. Unlike many of the other projects, the claustrophobic tension in Sud doesn’t come from being literally surrounded by sounds and images, but from a quiet fixation that renders us incapable of focusing on anything else. Throughout Sud the cadence of shouts and helicopters spills in from the installations in other rooms, amplifying a kind of haunting formal unity in the exhibition. 

Les Femmes d’Anvers en Novembre is the newest film presented. Contrasting with the nameless city masses of From the East, Les Femmes is a sensual and personal examination of smoking. The images often get suggestively close to women depicted smoking (and it is all women) and presents them as distinct, isolated individuals. 

“Moving Through Time and Space” will be running at the List Center through July 6.

Junot Díaz is a writing professor at MIT. His new novel, published last year, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is the story of a fat Dominican “ghetto-nerd,” who loves science fiction and fantasy genre more than life, and loves women even more than genre. He’s born and raised in New Jersey, but only finds true fulfillment when he returns home to the Dominican Republic to face the demons of his family’s history.

The book took 10 years to take shape, during which time Díaz tried (and failed) to write a different novel, traveled the world, and taught writing classes at MIT. Díaz is away in Europe this semester, but agreed to an e-mail interview with The Tech. (There is some strong language below).

The Tech: Were you “Dominican” in the super-macho player boy sense that you describe in the novel? What do you think of that cultural standard of masculinity? What kind of man did you want to be, growing up?

Junot Díaz: I was as super-macho as my father wanted me to be. I could box, I could shoot, I could walk through my neighborhood at four in the morning and nobody said shit, I thought my mother and my sisters less than people, I was my father’s son and I’m still trying to unprogram myself, I’m still wrestling with the consequences. Masculinity is another of those wonderful myths that shape individuals and societies and that deliver catastrophic blows to both. As I kid I wanted to be the kind of man that my father would love, that would dispel all my vulnerability and fear. Didn’t happen.

TT: On the other side, were there strong women in your life?

JD: Of course. I grew up with my grandmother, my mother, her two sisters and my two sisters in the house. Now that’s a lot of women. And Díaz women are like lightning: strong, brilliant, unpredictable and could clear a goddamn room with the slightest appearance. In that respect I had a very Frank Herbert childhood.

TT: You’ve said that your father had a library in the basement that showed you that reading could be masculine. I never thought of it as special to any gender in particular — in your culture, does everything have to be either masculine or feminine?

JD: In my culture? You mean our culture? Are you trying to tell me that reading and intellectual activity isn’t feminized in the U.S.? At a cultural level? That gender doesn’t infect nearly all our thinking in this, our society? These false binaries between masculine and feminine [are] not something that I invented nor something that’s exclusively “Dominican.” I might just happen to be more aware of these things but that doesn’t mean that we’re not all in the same sandbox.

And yes, if my father hadn’t been a reader, I doubt I would have embraced the practice so hungrily.

TT: How do the kids at MIT compare to the kids that you knew growing up or in college? Have you met anyone as nerdy as Oscar here?

JD: Shit, even nerds pick on people nerdier than them, all the while claiming not to be nerdy themselves. As for the last question: yes. Many times.

TT: There are lots of non-Hispanic immigrants at MIT — I’m thinking of Asian and South Asians in particular, who form the largest minority at MIT. Do you see their experiences as being similar to your own? Or is the cultural gap too wide?

JD: No use [generalizing] about something so stupendously complex. Always similarities and shared experiences but always gaps too. There are poor white kids and middle class black kids at MIT who had similar experiences to mine.

TT: What effect has your time at MIT had on you? Learned anything?

JD: OK, this isn’t a real question is it? Did I learn anything at MIT? How could you NOT learn something at MIT, whether you want to or not. MIT has more brains than money and … MIT is rich as shit so go figure.

TT: Do you like teaching, or is it just a way to make a living while you write?

JD: For me teaching is not about liking or disliking. It’s something I believe in. I think it’s important for every person to teach at one stage in their life or another. The teaching-learning dynamic is like no other.

TT: I got the feeling from the footnotes that you think the typical reader will be pretty ignorant of anything about the Dominican Republic, or even the role the U.S. played in its history.

JD: Really? The footnotes, for me, were not at all about educating readers. They were about the tension between the prime voice of the main text and the under-voice of the footnotes. The footnotes were all about the question of narrative authority and also about how desperate we as people are desperate for that authority. We want things clear and rational.

TT: What about politics? Do you care? Who do you support in the U.S. presidential elections? What do you think of Obama?

JD: As for politics do I care? This isn’t a real question is it? Yes, I care.

TT: The portrait of Oscar was sort of an excruciating close-up. I felt like I could see the sweat beading up on every roll of fat. Were you ever fat? How did you manage to get inside Oscar’s heaving body?

JD: Never fat. I’ve always been super-fit, my father’s son. A runner and a weight-lifter. But loathing the flesh is not something exclusive to those who are overweight. Oscar’s fleshiness stands in for so much in my mind. Didn’t take much for me to reach out my creative hand and seize the painful human condition that our bodies inflict upon us.

TT: I’m curious about the title: What do you mean by wondrous? Full of wonders like in fantasy or sci-fi? Because Oscar’s life is not exactly wonderful at first glance.

JD: Really? How many of us get a chance to confront a global curse, to confront the darkest dictatorship in the New World, to become a mythic force?

TT: You make fun of magical realism as a sort of stereotype of Latin American writing. How did that tradition inform this book? Did you make a conscious effort to avoid it?

JD: I don’t think I make fun of MR any more than I make fun of hip hyper-realism. For the record I’ve got nothing against magical realism. It’s a narrative strategy. A tool. Like all tools, useful in the right hands. I just don’t believe in hewing to any one strategy or one tool. To approach this world you need all strategies, all tools.

TT: I’ve heard you say that you felt like the biggest freak in the world growing up. Have you since found fellow freaks?

JD: Oh I certainly felt like a tremendous freak. But I also had the distinct impression that all my peers felt exactly the same. I feel like I’ve been surrounded by fellow freaks all my damn life. They’re called humans.

TT: Have you ever seriously considered suicide?

JD: Yes.

TT: What kind of history did your family have under the Trujillo regime? Lola [Oscar’s sister in the novel] says, “We’re a nation of 10 million Trujillos” — (or was it 8 million … Is that how much the population has changed in between the New Yorker short story and the novel?)

JD: Just rounded up to ten million because I had no idea when I would finally finish the novel. My family had almost no contact with the most repressive structures of Trujillo regime. We were anonymous poor folks, the kind you see in crowd scenes in movies.

TT: Your father was part of the [Dominican] military. Are you curious to know exactly what he did? How much moral responsibility or guilt would you feel to know that your family was part of a basically evil system?

JD: I know what my father did during his military service. Guilt? Responsibility? I’ve a more complicated relationship with my family’s history.

TT: You mentioned in an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air that “it was like Fight Club” growing up. That your father thought that kids should fight, and made sure that you all did. So were you a good fighter? Did you usually win?

JD: What a sensational question. Let’s say I was the best fight there was in Central Jersey and I knocked plenty of folks out. Would that change the basic cruelty of that dynamic, the sadness of a boy trying to impress, to curry love from his father, through fighting?

TT: Did you ever experience firsthand the kind of extreme violence that you describe in the book?

JD: And this is relevant why?

TT: You held a lot of different jobs (sometimes several simultaneously) growing up and in college. Did that discipline help you work on the book despite all the slow periods?

JD: Yup, I was first a laborer before a writer. The discipline didn’t hurt. One of the reasons I get up and write three hours a day.

TT: What was your first job, and how old were you?

JD: I was a pool table deliverer and wrote about that. My first job: paperboy. Delivered 120 papers a day. I was eleven.

TT: Are you religious at all? Do you believe in fuku?

JD: I only believe in my ancestors. And in history.

TT: What kind of schools did you go to as a kid? Did they do a good job on you?

JD: Public school all the way through college. A good job? Made me realize that you could be smart as hell but since you didn’t have the label of private school or elite school no one would really fucking care.

TT: Did you consider careers other than the one you eventually took up? Like science? What do you really think about scientists and engineers anyway?

JD: I’ve always known that I’d be doing something with books. As for MIT types, hard to generalize. I seem to get along with most science types OK but that’s not the first thing I look for in friends. Justice-minded outlook, adventurousness, loyalty and a background of hard work. And you can find people like this at MIT and outside of it too.

TT: Have you been back to visit the DR? What’s it like? Are you happy with the situation there now? What would you change?

JD: I go to Santo Domingo three times a year on average. If I could change anything I would change late modern capitalism, which is the reason so many people in the Caribbean are immiserated.

TT: Could/would your current success give you any leverage to do something?

JD: Being a writer only gives you leverage at the library. Certainly doesn’t give you power to do anything else but keep writing. Writers critique power and privilege but rarely do either of these things accrue to us.

TT: What’s next? What are you working on now? Do you still need a day job, and if not, will you come back and keep teaching at MIT anyway?

JD: I’ve never needed a day job. I’m one of those people who can live off very little. I teach because a) having health insurance is awesome and b) because I think it’s important, because it’s something that I feel I still have the energy to do. I’ll be back in Fall. Unless the lottery ticket I have in my hand pans out. Then I’ll be too busy buying books to teach.

Has Victorian humor survived the past century?

It certainly appeared to Friday, May 9 as the audience rolled with laughter on opening night of the Lyric Stage Company’s production of The Importance of Being Earnest.

This classic British comedy of manners by Oscar Wilde has become famous for its witty, snappy language, comedic romances, and hysterically funny characters. Yet this play is also a biting satire of British society in the 1890s and is still recognizable as such today.

The show had an excellent cast with Lewis D. Wheeler’s Algernon and Ed Hoopman’s Jack complementing each other perfectly. Both fine actors, Wheeler emphasized the lightness of Algy’s character while Hoopman balanced him with a believable earnestness.

Bobbie Steinbach added a new twist to Lady Bracknell’s famous “Handbag” scene. In it, she began shaking with horror and shock and came close to a fit during her “A handbag!?!?” line.

Steinback departed Act 1 — her last line forbidding her daughter “to marry into a cloak-room, and form an alliance with a parcel” — with even more force, built-up shock, and horror. Although unique, the overall effect felt like over-acting and added a sour note to the otherwise splendid scene. All was forgiven, however, in Act 3 as Steinbach closed the show with a superb performance.

Hannah Barth, who played Gwendolen, had a superb sense of comic timing, which brought the audience to the floor during the proposal scene. But she ruined it all by over-sexualizing Gwendolen’s character and overstepping the Victorian bounds of propriety as she constantly kissed Jack’s neck during the proposal. (This is especially striking because the rest of the show remained true to the period.) Although probably a directorial decision, this scene left a lasting stain on the audience’s perception of Barth’s performance, which was never completely erased by the following acts.

Jessica Grant, as Cecily, felt a little “off” compared to the rest of the company. Her acting was good enough, yet somehow she never sparkled the same way the other players did.

The technical elements of the show offset any foibles of the acting or directing. A creative set design allowed for easy transitions between the three different scenes, while still allowing each scene to look natural.

Set Designer Brynna Bloomfield paid meticulous attention to period detail. The first act was almost entirely mauve, a fad in England at the time, with popular wallpaper designs from the 1890s. (In fact, the library for Act 3 had a William Morris wallpaper design.)

The costumes were also excellent. While being completely true to the period — the men wandered around with spats on their shoes and the women’s dresses had the mandatory bustle — the costumes went a step further in adding to the interpretation of Wilde’s play. In the final scene, Lady Bracknell, dressed in a deep purple that contrasted sharply with the light, summery outfits of the rest of the actors, storms into the country estate like a black thundercloud intent on ruining a perfect day.

As with many productions of The Importance of Being Earnest, the director, Spiro Veloudos, presented a period production without any major cuts or additions to the script, but his vision for the show did shine through in his elegant blocking. The couples were often placed at mirrored corners of the stage, balancing each other while creating delicious symmetry. As the actors moved around the stage in mirrored motions, the audience was reminded of the inherent location and character symmetries in Wilde’s work.

But, at times, Veloudos’s desire to maximize the utility of the thrust stage used by the production led to unusual, and often distracting, blocking configurations. In the long dialogues between Jack and Algernon, the actors paced around the small stage, hopping up and sitting down periodically in different chairs for different views of the audience. The direction felt awkward, as the motion distracted from the vitality of the characters’ dialogue and added nothing to the scene.

Perhaps the subtlest, but most interesting, directorial addition to the show was in the opening of the third act. Algernon and Jack entered the study nonchalantly, whistling a catchy tune, heard long before they themselves are seen entering: Gilbert and Sullivan’s “Never Mind the Why and Wherefore” from H.M.S. Pinafore. The song, which rebukes class rank and social standing in favor of marriages for love, adds a dimension to the marriages set at the end of the play. In The Importance of Being Earnest, love does not level all ranks, and the “happy” marriages are only ultimately achieved with the incentives of monetary and social gain.

The inclusion of “Never Mind the Why and Wherefore” added a clever twist to the play, and fit nicely in a production that allowed the flourishes of Wilde’s script to shine through.

You have no idea how much mail we get daily at The Tech. Seriously. If you try to guess, you’ll come up short.

In the past week, the Arts mailing list alone has received slightly more than 200 e-mails. Pair this with the heavy volume of snail mail that also pours into our P.O. box on the daily and you’ll understand why it’s tempting to ignore the ever-growing pile of press releases, event calendars, review inquiries, and complementary media.

Part of the fun of editing for Arts is, of course, being able to request press copies of albums, books, and event tickets I badly want. But it’s equally fun to stumble upon new and surprising items in my mailbox, like surprisingly brilliant upcoming CDs, misguided advice books, and hysterically embarrassing DVD releases.

Though there’s no room to print each and every hidden gem that winds up on my desk in W20-483, I’ve (finally) cleared out the Arts inbox to present to you the weirdest, awesomest, funniest, and worst press items received this semester. Without further adieu, here’s the Best of the Bin.

With a cute, smiling model on the cover and the promise to explain “everything to do and say to guarantee a 2nd date,” Rogers’ book might seem like a godsend for a bachelorette looking to increase her net of possibilities or move into the long term with a special beau. The table of contents includes deceptively normal chapter titles like “The Art of First Impressions” and “Your Male GPS: How and Where to Meet Men,” but the content is, in fact, nauseatingly similar to the creepy motivational speaker’s ramble in Donnie Darko.

Rogers, who claims to have gotten second dates with a 98 percent success rate, is the very image of a Southern blonde, and is far more focused on self esteem from a puritan Christian perspective than real modern dating tips. “You’re a doer!” she writes, “Kudos to you! Believe me, things are about to happen!”

Readers, here’s a real tip for your self esteem: Keep away from books like this, which are a waste of money, teach you nothing new, and make you look severely lame to any prospective dates.

Touting the traveling show as “the most comprehensive exhibition of baseball memorabilia ever assembled,” the Museum of Science probably should’ve mailed this press release to our sports editor, Shreyes Seshasai. Lucky for me, the curators felt this collection of uniforms, photos, and letters fit in better with Arts content, and they mailed me an invite … and a bag of Cracker Jack! Baseball isn’t my thing, but if you feed me, you’ve sure got my listing. Mmmmmm.

After the garage-rock brilliance of their 2004 self-titled disc, I thought for sure Phantom Planet would misstep after leaving Epic Records for Fueled by Ramen, the label responsible for such sources of my ire as Paramore, Panic! At the Disco, and Gym Class Heroes. Sure, Raise the Dead is poppier than its predecessor, but its conceptual lyrics and almost-orchestral arrangements make it far more beautiful and mature (even if it’s not quite as fun).

The first four tracks could all easily be leading radio singles, and the last half of the disc rocks smartly. The biggest problem is the fifth track; it seems lead singer Alex Greenwald’s collaboration with Mark Ronson on a cover of Radiohead’s “Just” has gotten to his head, and sandwich song “Quarantine” is so derivatively Yorkeian that I had to listen to The Bends just to clean out my ears. But other than that, Raise the Dead is just plain good, in spite of the label responsible for it.

Remember the 1984 Tom Hanks comedy Bachelor Party? No? Neither do I, but apparently we can thank this “shocking, shameless” comedy for inspiring Hollywood gems like Get Over It and How High.

Now we have a new screen classic to add to that list: this year’s sequel, coming in 24 years later, Bachelor Party 2: The Last Temptation. Starring various bros I’ve never heard of, the film tells the story of a “happily engaged” couple that engages in “an outrageously sinful celebration that you have to see to believe!”

Yawn. Like I haven’t heard that one before. Any takers on reviewing this film masterpiece? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Ryan Clauson, a Northeastern University student, took the year off from education in order to nobly instruct college men in the fine art of wooing beautiful woman.

I’m willing to hazard that this was a poor career move.

His instructional YouTube videos and straight-outta-’97 Web site (http://www.listenactattract.com/) offer two hours’ worth of “the number one tool for attracting really beautiful women.” Over the past few months, he has sent our office various e-mails telling me how I can learn “all the elements of face to face communication” and talk to “a girl who is clearly hot and everyone knows it.”

Well. I’m a woman. Who dates a man. So. After I sent an e-mail to Clauson that only said, “Do not want,” he apologized for putting us on the list by mistake. Little did I know I’d come to miss the persistent, overly-exclamatory e-mails in which Clauson promised, “I’LL LET YOU KEEP THE PROGRAM FOR FREE!!!!” Does my longing for more contact mean his program (gasp) works? Perish the thought, but check out the Web site for kicks.

The sixth installment of the annual Boston Independent Film Festival took place a couple weeks ago from April 23rd to 28th. Over 90 films were screened over seven days at the Somerville Theatre, the Brattle, and Coolidge Corner. In case you missed the action, here are some highlights and lowlights so you can start getting excited for next year’s festival.

A good way to start is to highlight the films that won awards at the festival. Awards at film festivals are great, mostly because they allow filmmakers to put that little laurel thing on the DVD box or their Web site. They are also useful to help one decide what films are actually worth watching! This year Ballast, Momma’s Man, and My Winnipeg won awards for narrative features. Sing Song Blue, Secrecy, and Life.Support.Music. won for documentaries. For the short films, Man, Glory at Sea, and Tony Zoreil came out on top. Be on the lookout for these films at local cinemas or on Netflix.

Now comes the part where I confess that I didn’t actually make it to most of these winning films! I sampled the festival’s offerings in a manner that best fit my schedule more than anything else. The result was sort of a mixed bag — some good surprises and some really boring surprises.

To begin with the good, I have to say that the twelve shorts I was able to see were almost all fantastic! Tony Zoreil is an adorable and delightfully whimsical French short about the aptly named Tony Zoreil (oreille is French for ear) with unusually large ears. Also of note is The Rambler, which in the spirit of gross-out horror succeeded in being one of the most disgusting things I have ever seen.

I was also not disappointed with both full-length documentaries I attended. We are Wizards is about the Harry Potter fan culture and instead of trying to cover the whole phenomenon, it focuses on a few people who were inspired creatively by the books and films. The result is an extremely joyful film about people with Harry Potter Web sites, rock bands, and cartoons. It isn’t as centered as it could be, but it is still a fun experience, especially if you are not afraid to embrace your dorky side.

Crawford documents the lives of the citizens of a small town in Texas where president George W. Bush just happens to live. Although it is about a subject that even Michael Moore would admit is extremely played out, the film approaches the Bush presidency from a slightly different angle. It is not about what Bush himself actually did or didn’t do so much as the personal stories of the people who live in a miniscule town that the president decided to relocate to shortly before his election and how this affected them.

I have mixed feelings about some of the narratives I saw. Transsiberian is a big bad-ass production starring Sir Ben Kingsley, Woody Harrelson, and Emily Mortimer. Russians are in right now and this film is Eastern Promises plus trains and minus the naked fight scene. The film makes it half-way to good, but then makes a U-turn and heads straight to crazy. It débuts with some beautiful shots and an interesting reversal of fortune, but then it just all falls apart and is totally ridiculous. I liked it, but only because of what it could have been.

Blood Car lies on the other end of the finance spectrum from Transsiberian, which had an estimated 15 million dollar budget. There are no big names or fancy explosions, but there is a lot of blood and sex. The film takes place in the near future where gas is over 30 dollars a gallon and no one can afford to drive. But how is a young man supposed to get laid without any wheels? The solution, naturally, is to kill people and use the blood to fuel your ride. My beef with the movie, besides the fact that it sometimes felt a little too much like an extended YouTube video was the complete lack of effort to make the movie a little layered. Yes, I understand that the filmmakers weren’t trying to change the world or win an Oscar, but would it have hurt to make any of the characters more than one-dimensional caricatures?

And now, dear readers, prepare yourself for the not so good. Two narrative films that I found to be excruciatingly boring were The Tracey Fragments and My Effortless Brilliance. The Tracey Fragments seemed promising — it stars Ellen Page as a girl running away from home while searching for her missing younger brother. The film starts as an interesting cinematic device where the film is literally fragmented as the title suggests. For the first few minutes, many screen in screen and splitscreens are interesting, but it becomes very tiring. I have seen other films utilize this sort of gimmick, such as Conversations with Other Women, but the reason Conversations is so great is that the split-screen is used to show more at once than what one is capable of seeing in a single shot. Here, however, it often felt that multiple shots were shown simultaneously not to gain more perspective, but for the pure sake of continuing the style. It would make for a cool music video, but not a cool movie. Even worse, Page is obnoxious in this role that feels like a re-hash of her brilliant previous performances in Juno and Hard Candy. I was really hoping to see Page take on a different character and command the role, but it appears she is in a bit of a rut. This film will probably be out soon is select theaters … don’t be lured in by Ellen Page’s star power — see something else.

As far as My Effortless Brilliance, it had some great humorous moments, but they were literally few and far between. I don’t think I have looked at my watch so many times in a period of 90 minutes since high school orchestra rehearsals. Something would happen, but then seemingly endless minutes of cinematically empty footage followed. While I can appreciate a slower paced film — rather than a lightning-fast Michael Bay blockbuster — watching people sit around and do crosswords as in My Effortless Brilliance felt pointless. It was missing a connective thread or direction such as, say, a plot would have provided.

Okay, well I hope you will consider attending next year’s festival and looking into some of these films, even if they are a little harder to find! Or you could just see Iron Man like everyone else and I will cry my little Robert Downey Jr. tears to myself.

It’s that time of year again: Robert Fripp and co. have reached a lull, anticipating their end-of-summer tour, and the only way to put food on the table (and promote the shows) is to release a blindly hand-picked bootleg from the King Crimson archive. And thank goodness they picked a decent show.

Robert Fripp started King Crimson more than thirty years ago, and to this day remains the only sustaining member of the band. For those who don’t know, Fripp is one of music’s most notorious guitar snobs, an anal-retentive maniac (who has kicked out fans from shows for taping), a pompous and condescending bandmate, and yet one of progressive-rock’s greatest assets. Championing his strange style of interlocking guitar parts, vertigo-inducing time signatures, and ambient sonic textures, every incarnation of King Crimson has stood at the forefront of its contemporaries.

With sporadic album releases throughout the nineties, it was hard to keep the fans interested all the time. The intermittent Crimson-related music projects have been numerous, but diverse. Fripp’s company, Discipline Global Mobile, has been releasing live King Crimson albums in special collector’s edition bootleg CDs to keep fans investing in the King Crimson moniker, a trademark that sits carefully under Fripp’s watch.

Just this Tuesday, DGM released The Collectable King Crimson: Volume 3, the third installment in a series of recovered live concerts spanning the band’s whole career. It’s clear that Fripp asked one of his lackeys to file through the archives and throw something onto a double disc set for immediate sale. The album art is shockingly dull and immature: a cheesy burgundy gradient emblazoned with two awful square pictures of the band playing live.

The recording is taken straight from the soundboard at a 1996 London show, the last show of that tour. The opening act canceled at the last minute, so Fripp opened with a self-indulgent “soundscape,” a technique and term he coined in the seventies which involves him creating repeated textures and ambient noises with one guitar and a decent array of guitar effect pedals. After draping the audience in a wash of fluttery guitar notes, the rest of the band joined him on stage to kick into “Conundrum.” This short percussion interlude did only a little to stir the audience, so it was up to singer Adrian Belew to get things started with “Thela Hun Gingeet,” a title that anagrams Belew’s soaring chorus line: “Heat in the jungle!”

Belew struggles his way through the lyrics to “Neurotica,” a song that features him essentially performing a spoken-word slam poem in distinct counter-rhythm to the rest of the band. Eventually, he finds his pace. The whole first set is pretty standard: the classic songs from the 80s incarnations and new tunes from the most recent album, THRAK. Of the new songs, which at that point fans were quite acquainted with, “Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream” proved the most accessible in the live setting. The 90s lineup of King Crimson introduced second percussionist Pat Mastelotto, who prevails on “Sex.”

The new songs also indicate that the band has steered away from using Belew’s maddening lyrics and skilled singing to attract attention. While Belew hasn’t changed a bit, the music tends towards arrangements that are clearly against pop standards. “Vrooom,” one of the more popular new songs, contains a multitude of noisy sections, chaotic rhythms, and intermittent dreamy passages that culminate into a really likeable King Crimson track.

The virtuosity is still there. However, the disc leaves a listener feeling standard and unmoved. Either the band didn’t preview the disc before release, or they’ve changed their sales standards: the concert contains a lot of mistakes and imperfections that many would consider unprofessional. Try listening to disc two while ignoring a drunken fan in the front row yelling “Crrrrrrimmmsssson!” every couple minutes. Then when you’ve had enough, try tapping your foot to classic songs like “Lark’s Tounge In Aspic pt II,” “Frame By Frame,” or “Three of a Perfect Pair.” You simply can’t because they are played much too fast. At times the beautiful interlocking guitar parts shift out of phase and become muddled and mediocre.

King Crimson has played much better shows, with much better set-lists, and with much more spirit. Belew stupidly says at the intermission, “Give us fifteen minutes, and we’ll assault you again.” The silly banter and amateur mistakes are not definitive of King Crimson, nor do they belong on a special edition CD meant to be a collectible. What does save this disc, and perhaps the key reason it was released, is the inclusion of the song “21st Century Schizoid Man” towards the end of the set. The song hadn’t been played in 22 years, due to over-rotation on radios. It was the song that put Crimson on the map, but Fripp didn’t want to sell out to pop stardom.

Once August begins, King Crimson will embark on a new tour. It’s been three years, but the general hope is that they’ve been preparing for a powerful and virtuosic sampling of their latest music. Though it’s generating income for the band, the fans could have done without The Collectable King Crimson: Volume 3 — it’s the forthcoming tour that’s going to really determine if Fripp plus five can reverse the effects of a couple bad releases in the King Crimson catalogue.

Dear girl from Boston College who stood in front of me at the Third Eye Blind show,

I knew you were trouble the moment I laid eyes on you … well, at least from the moment I saw your twin sister, who was straddling her brotesque boyfriend’s polo-sporting shoulders and waving her cell phone in the air. She was bellowing unintelligibly from her amorous post, summoning some unknown creature towards her while hovering above a crowd dense with sweaty tank top-wearing bodies. That creature was you. As Howie Day crooned lamely over his weakly rhythmic acoustic strummings, you wiggled your tanning-salon-brown body directly in front of me, and gyrated and squealed as Day finished up his hit song “Collide.” At that point, it was hard to distinguish you from the rest of the rock-concert-virgin fans that packed Johnson Athletic Center; they were all taking pictures of each other with arms extended, completely ignoring the (admittedly boring) troubadour on stage. But once Day nonchalantly unplugged his wooden instrument of aural mediocrity, you and your six-foot-six boyfriend started to really piss me off.

Have you ever been to a concert before? No? Here are some hints for next time you decide to doom a venue with your presence; hopefully, you’ll be able to avoid the potential violence I might’ve unleashed on you had your body odor not turned me away before I had the chance. Tip 1: When everyone else at the show is pushing forward, please do not push back. Sandwich meats can only withstand so much pressure. Tip 2: Making out with and humping your boyfriend while dancing like my mom doesn’t really conserve space, either. Tip 3: When aforementioned sandwich meat kindly asks you to stop leaning back into her, turning around to face your victim and continually screaming “I don’t know what you want!” with vodka-scented breath probably won’t aid the conflict. Tip 4: If all else fails, you should probably abstain from rubbing yourself on me to prove a point. All it’s proving is that your bacne covers a pretty massive surface area.

Lucky for you, I managed to escape the hulking crowd and make it to the bleachers, where my friend (who’d had less tolerance with you and had already fled your general vicinity) was sitting. Our much improved and far less sweltering spot did little to combat the ruined mood of the evening. Third Eye Blind took the stage with presence, no doubt, but it was the kind of presence that makes people like you shriek and turns off anyone who actually likes music. “I have a feeling we’re gonna’ have a real good time tonight,” lead singer/asshole in a top hat Stephan Jenkins proclaimed, and followed it up with, “I don’t know what it is, but you guys have me in a really good mood!” He proceeded to lead his rag-tag replacement band — comprised of none of the original musicians from 3eb’s 1997 seminal self-titled release — through a set of mostly new material, filled with lyrical leakage about boob jobs and non-dairy creamer. I am sure you were one of the many ticket holders who continually shouted for “Semi-Charmed Life,” and to be honest, I was internally shouting with you; ever since the turn of the twenty-first century, this band has been putting out material that would make any sane songwriter want to step off that ledge, not step back from it. But don’t be fooled into thinking we’re allies because of my distaste for Jenkins’ new tunes; unlike you, I didn’t eat it up when the band played a terribly unlistenable set a-la MTV Unplugged (minus the ability) on a makeshift stage at the back of Johnson, nor did I applaud when a random girl came on stage to melodramatically strum an inaudible acoustic guitar (royal WTF?). In fact, between your behavior and 3eb’s performance, I’m willing to say that out of the many shows I’ve attended, Spring Weekend was the worst concert of my life. Don’t take it as a compliment, but I fear the fault probably lies more with the band than with you.

Anyway, I tried to find you on Facebook after the concert to tell you how much you suck as a human, but I’m just not a skilled enough stalker. So you’re safe for now. But if I run into you next year when Hanson or whoever plays MIT, you better be sober enough to run.

Hate,

Sarah

It’s no surprise that in Boston, a city inundated with eager students, free arts events harness high attendance. Last week, hundreds of such students attended a free performance of the Boston Lyric Opera’s last production of the season, The Abduction from the Seraglio. Though this is one of Mozart’s lesser known operas, the theatre filled to near full capacity. The Boston Lyric Opera has been offering free tickets to the public (but specifically targeting students) for the dress rehearsals of all its major productions. Before the beginning of the overture, Janice Mancini Del Sesto, the exuberant General Director of the BLO, arrived in the left box seat to announce this season’s recipient of the Stephen Shrestinian Award for Excellence. She then proudly led the audience in a grand applause for Joseph Valone, a Boston University music program alumnus; the award was a cash prize for a young, up-and-coming performer wishing to further his or her career in professional opera.

Before she left the box seat and with spotlight still shining upon her, Del Sesto warned the audience that since this was a dress rehearsal, the cast could stop at any moment in order to implement last minute changes. Immediately thereafter, a smiling Willie Anthony Waters walked out, waving his conductor’s baton toward the audience. As applause for him faded, the orchestra began the overture. This passage of music, shorter than other Mozart overtures, set the tone for the rest of the evening. Instead of containing memorable melodies and varied tempos and dynamics, the overture meandered around a few chords.

The stage curtain opened up to reveal a cross section of two neighboring cars on the Orient Express. A projection, displaying an antique map of the train’s course, glimmered on the curtain for the duration of the opera. This set decision, probably made by stage director James Robinson, created an uncomfortably cramped and narrow view of the stage. Clearly, Robinson was trying to imitate the actual small quarters of even the most posh cars on the Orient Express, but the half-raised curtains obscured so much of the stage’s natural space that it was difficult to get a clear perspective, even from the balcony seats.

Because all the scenes happen in one train car or the other, set designer Allen Moyer cleverly devised a moving set on wheels that shifted from left to right during scene changes. This not only gave the impression that we were still on a train with the cast, but also helped to solve the horizontal spacing issues on stage. The story of The Abduction from the Seraglio is a universal one, involving love, jealousy, desire, and risk. Belmonte, a Spanish nobleman, has arrived on the Orient Express to find his wife, Constanze, who was captured earlier by pirates and sold to the Pasha Selim from Istanbul.

While there is much opportunity for drama and humor here, this new interpretation of Abduction proved weak and unmoving. Sung in a very traditional operatic style, most musical numbers showcased vocalists singing a small number of lines for numerous repetitions. This rendered most of the solo arias dull and boring. The orchestral parts failed to introduce new and exciting motifs to balance the lack of variety in the singing. It appears as though Robinson tried to exaggerate the humor in this opera in order to appeal to a wider audience; the result, however, was an awful display of poorly-executed slapstick scenes. Osmin, one of the Pasha’s servants, oversees the duties of a lesser servant. The two get into a scuffle so that Osmin may show his power over the weaker Pedrillo, and at the end of the scene, Osmin hog-ties Pedrillo up in rope, kicks him on the floor, and finishes by shoving an apple in Pedrillo’s mouth. This whole brawl looked utterly silly and immature on stage, and detracted from the whole performance.

Subsequent scenes included slapstick comedy that did not complement the drama of this opera in an appropriate way. A closer look at the program for this opera reveals that most of the actors are making their Boston Lyric Opera debut in this production. Their lack of experience working together definitely came through during the many duets and ensemble pieces. Specifically, during Belmonte’s and Constanze’s duet, they sing with little interaction. They do not naturally appear to be lovers on stage, but rather as individual singers vying for personal attention.

As the Boston Lyric Opera’s last production of the season, The Abduction from the Seraglio was not a good choice. However, it could also be Robinson’s poor decision-making that turned this production into a caricature. It seems as though the goal here was mass appeal and cheap laughter rather than achieving the pinnacle of fine art. Though you still have another week to catch this opera (if you can stomach the crude humor and inexperienced singers), the Boston Lyric Opera has another season to get things right.

April showers bring May flowers, and in this case, the downpour of ex-lead-singer shows last month has led to a hefty crop of diverse acts (okay, Jeremy Enigk snuck in there, somehow). There are so many notable groups playing locally this month that I didn’t even get to list (The Teenagers, Los Campesinos!, The New Deal, Firewater, Eyedea & Abilities and Kevin Devine, to name a few), so I highly recommend scouring venue Web sites to see if I skipped over one of your favorites. But this is my column, after all, and so my picks get top billing. With that I present to you May’s best shows; especially notable ones are marked with stars.

Trance, electronica, and easy listening are perhaps not the kinds of musical genres this rockist writer might’ve booked had she been responsible for Steer Roast’s lineup, but it’s certainly worth attending a bacchanal in your own backyard. Avoid Wzt Hearts and Excepter, but be sure to catch Space Faces and Big Bear.

Okay, so Pearl Jam is touring nationally and Alice in Chains is working on a new album with William DuVall singing. But tickets for the former will be way too expensive, and replacing your dead lead singer is downright creepy. Consider this Monsters of Mock show your best and cheapest chance at a musical time machine (outside of your own Walkman).

The Third Hand is a serious departure from Rjd2’s previous sample-heavy works, because it features him playing instruments and singing on almost every track. Expect more of a pop rock feel at this live performance.

Swede singer Sarah Assbring is absolutely miserable, and with her melancholic pop melodies and lo-fi production, she’ll do everything in her power to make you miserable, too. But rest assured, it’s the good kind of miserable; think of a cuter, female Morrissey type dressed as a 50s housewife and singing with The Shangri-Las.

I don’t care what anyone has to say. Phantom Planet’s 2004 self-titled did everything The Strokes ever wanted to do and did it a million times better. The melodies are memorable, Jason Schwartzman’s drumming is powerful, and Greenwald’s formerly O.C.-friendly vocals growl and snarl with the coolest of the cool. New release Raise the Dead partially returns to the land of radio friendly, but maintains at least some rock aesthetic. They’re opening for Panic at the Disco, Motion City Soundtrack and The Hush Sound; leave early.

Brighton quartet asks the question Do You Like Rock Music? on latest LP. Perfect for post-punk lovers.

This Irish band, formerly called Juniper, once featured troubadour Damien Rice as part of their lineup. Since his eviction, Bell X1 has morphed into a weird but accessible rock act that’s dead on about seventy percent of the time. Let’s hope May 16 will be one of those nights.

Canadian band commonly abbreviated (for good reason) as Silver Mt Zion shares members with avant-gardist post-rockers Godspeed You Black Emperor!; strings, choir-like vocals and a punk rock ethos characterize this group’s performance.

Bluesy duo tours in support of Danger Mouse-produced Attack and Release. Check out leading single “Strange Times” online; it’s less lo-fi as past releases, but you’ll see it’s just as rocking.

Rock twosome has consistently released albums at fairly regular intervals, grounded by the popularity of single “Bound for the Floor.” Lead singer Scott Lucas is particularly notable for installing bass pickups on his electric guitar. Check out their notoriously high-energy show in Allston Rock City.

J’aime’s departed, Nick’s dropped the Diamonds, and the singles from upcoming Arm’s Way are not even half as good as “Where There’s A Will There’s A Whalebone.” But this show will probably be better than almost anything else musical happening this month, hence its stamp of approval.

Former Sunny Day Real Estate frontman has turned to Christianity and scoring soundtracks (most notably Pixies-heavy The United States of Leland) since the breakup of his emo firstborn. Now he’s about to release his fifth solo album; catch that material live at this underage-unfriendly Fenway Recording Sessions gig.

Ever since Briton John Oliver appeared as a correspondent on The Daily Show, I’ve wanted to see more of his work, and have hoped to some day be able to talk to him. Thanks to a Comedy Central special, I got to do both this past week. On Sunday, Mr. Oliver starred in his own one-hour stand-up special, “Terrifying Times,” in which he discussed the scariness that is world politics. Instead of crude humor, Mr. Oliver made intelligent observations about serious situations put in a comedic light. A few days before “Terrifying Times” aired, I was able to talk to Mr. Oliver by phone about his transition into comedy, his work on The Daily Show, and his new comedy special. Below is an excerpt.

The Tech: You went to Cambridge University. What was your major there and how did you go from Cambridge to comedy?

John Oliver: I did English there, which was easy because I’m already English. So I was bound to be good at it. And there’s quite a famous comedy troupe there called the Footlights, which gave birth to Peter Cook and Monty Python and many, many other people. I was involved in that, so I started doing comedy there at Cambridge writing.

TT: You mentioned in the special that comedians don’t choose comedy until all the career dreams of their parents are in the gutter. Did you choose comedy before your parents’ dreams for you died?

JO: What, were smashed? No, I think my dad probably realized that his dream for me was dying early. He desperately wanted me to become a football player. But I think it became pretty clear that I didn’t have the physical attributes for that … I guess by the time I got to university they had probably pretty much given up. I was putting all my eggs in one very shaky basket. And I think they knew I was going to do something stupid, like try a career in comedy.

TT: And how did you transition from comedy to The Daily Show?

JO: Well, I was writing and doing stand-up in London. And I’m not entirely sure how they heard of what I was doing over there … It’s the kind of thing you don’t want to ask too many questions about. I was flown over to meet them and I was offered a job on the spot. It was my favorite show before I came here — I’d never been to America before I came here to work here. It happened fast. I can’t really explain it now.

TT: When you were doing comedy in England, did you always do political humor?

JO: Maybe not, I guess, when I started off. But as I got better at writing, I started writing about what I cared about more, and I’ve always been interested in politics.

TT: Did your work include American political humor, or was it more focused on English politics?

JO: People in Europe and I guess around the world know more about American politics than Americans think they do. We have to because what happens here impacts our lives very directly, especially in Britain with our special, special relationship. And don’t think we’re not grateful for that every morning as well. So, yeah, it very much touched on American policies because America runs the world in the way that we used to.

TT: Do you have any vices?

JO: Vices! Not really. I don’t really drink. I don’t smoke. I’m emotionally repressed as any good British person is. So, I don’t know. I like sport. I really like sport, and I could watch sport all day, everyday, and in fact, can get pretty close to that … I’m about as far from [John] Belushi that you can be without becoming a Mormon.

TT: What is it like being a Daily Show correspondent?

JO: It’s great. It’s kind of my dream job, really. I guess my experience is slightly different because I’m a writer on the show as well. I come in at 9:00 every morning and we start the writing meetings. So then, if I’m on the show, I’ll be writing something for that. If I’m not, I’ll be writing something for somebody else.

TT: How are the correspondents chosen for each piece? Is there competition?

JO: No, not competition. Usually we kind of decide as we’re coming up with the bit; usually it’s pretty obvious who would be the best for it, then we’ll write for that person.

TT: Have you been surprised by your success on the show, and now having your own special?

JO: Yeah, of course. I mean, when I first moved over here, my manager in England advised me not to sign a lease or rent longer than a month because he reckoned I’d be fired within three weeks. So to be honest, anything from there became a surprise because my expectations were so low … I’ve been absolutely amazed by how it’s all gone, and I couldn’t be happier. I was fully expecting to be fired due to lack of talent and be back in England by now, by a long stretch.

TT: What are the biggest things that have surprised you about America and working on The Daily Show?

JO: The food in America has different flavors than I’m used to. I’m used to one flavor in food, and that flavor is nothing. So having anything more than that has been a great surprise. And in terms of working on The Daily Show, it’s just quite strange the kind of guests you end up meeting. I met [Pervez] Musharraf, the current prime minister of Pakistan. It’s very strange on days like that. None of us can understand why he’s here. That’s true of all the candidates when they come on. You feel it’s just a cable comedy show. We work in a small office above a small studio and we just try to make each other laugh all day. And then all of a sudden someone running for leader of the free world will show up to do a five minute bit. It’s very strange. We tend to be quite an enclosed community on this show, so it’s hard to — we tend not to think about the wider implications of what we’re doing at all.

TT: I hate to go back to the less political part of your answer, but what’s your favorite food?

JO: I like Indian food a lot because I come from England and the food we eat more than anything else is Indian food.

TT: Do you feel like Indian food is one of the better results of English imperialism?

JO: Definitely. We got some great trophies from our empire. Indian food, that was good. We also got carpets, and pretty much everything inside the British Museum was stolen. It’s basically like a warehouse for gangsters, the British Museum … There’s nothing in there that we genuinely legally own, other than perhaps the Magna Carta.

TT: In the special, you talk about being fascinated by an inflatable barbeque in a mall. Do you like to visit malls?

JO: No. I very much do not like visiting malls because they sap my will to live.

TT: Finally, where do you see yourself in five years?

JO: I’d like to still be here. I get asked that a lot by journalists, I guess because what other people have gone on to do — like [Steve] Carell or [Stephen] Colbert, and I guess [Ed] Helms now. If I was doing anything else in America, I would be trying to get on this show. So now I’m just trying not to get fired. I just don’t want to leave, so I’ll very happily be here in five years.

My new favorite thing when looking up a movie is to read the plot keywords on IMDB. They are usually hilarious and often surprisingly able to sum up a movie. For example, the keywords posted for Baby Mama, the new comedy starring Tina Fey, are “pregnancy,” “toilet,” and “surrogate mother.” These three words are absolutely accurate; the movie is indeed about pregnancy and surrogacy, but it’s also so absurd that the word “toilet” is not out of place.

Baby Mama is set in Philadelphia and centers around a 37-year-old professional, Kate (Tina Fey). The deal is that Kate desperately wants a baby but has a messed up uterus. Enter Angie (Amy Poehler), the “baby mama,” who will carry Kate’s child for a hefty sum. All goes well at first … until we learn that Angie is actually a total nutjob and may not actually be pregnant with Kate’s baby. At the same time, a love interest for Kate is introduced in the form of Rob (Greg Kinnear), a smoothie shop owner who is apparently perfect for Kate. But what will he think of her baby-making plans? Anyway, the shit hits the fan at the baby shower, when all the lies are revealed. Then it is a race to a delivery scene and a big disgusting predictable happy ending!

Both Fey and Poehler are extremely likable in their roles and it is great to see the former Weekend Update co-anchors reunited. They are not only two of the funniest women in Hollywood, but also so good together! Kinnear, on the other hand, is under-utilized as the male lead. He can be both a great actor and comedian but here he is more of a placeholder than anything else. In addition to the leads, some additional wackiness is provided by the supporting roles. Steve Martin plays Kate’s hippie boss and in classic Steve Martin style doesn’t even have to open his mouth to get laughs. Sigourney Weaver also hams it up as the owner of a surrogate mother agency. Unfortunately, the needlessly obnoxious Dax Shepard is also in Baby Mama in the role of Angie’s white trash boyfriend. Maybe if we all continue to ignore Shepard he will just go away; I can only hope.

Tina Fey did not write Baby Mama herself, as some might think, although had she penned it, it probably would have been better. Instead the film was written and directed by Michael McCullers, who is best known for lending his writing talents to the Austin Powers series as well as Saturday Night Live. One can clearly see the SNL background in Baby Mama — not only because almost everyone in the film is or has been on the show, but also because of the outright ridiculousness of some of the characters and scenarios. SNL bravely continues to do a less subtle style of comedy that lacks self-awareness and that has perhaps lost its edge in the last decade. Sometimes they still get it right, but that is typically with the digital shorts or political satire while the rest of the sketches fall short. I wonder if Baby Mama’s SNL-esque brand of comedy can hold up versus edgier fodder like the latest Judd Apatow flick, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

In the end, Baby Mama isn’t half bad, but it’s nothing special either. It is hard to not recommend this film as it does succeed in making you laugh, but the idea is a little tired and so are many of the gags.

Comedy movies of the past few years have progressively gravitated towards in-your-face outrageous laughs. Movies like Knocked Up, Superbad, and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story have led the way to this new form of R-rated comedy. These films are a direct result of Judd Apatow’s vision, who directed Knocked Up, produced Superbad, and most recently produced Forgetting Sarah Marsall. This movie serves up the laughs at a fevered pace, but Apatow’s formula is becoming a little predictable.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall stars Jason Segel (who also wrote the film) as Peter Bretter, a musician who becomes deliriously heartbroken after his television superstar girlfriend Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell) dumps him. In a desperate attempt to leave his depression behind, he takes a trip to Hawaii only to be confronted head on by Sarah and her new boyfriend Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) who are also vacationing. He meets a new love interest in the form of Rachel Jansen (Mila Kunis), which surprisingly makes Sarah jealous of Peter’s budding relationship. Hilarity ensues as Peter slowly comes to terms with the fact that his relationship with Sarah is completely over. Several Judd Apatow regulars also pop up, including Paul Rudd (Knocked Up, 40 Year Old Virgin) and Jonah Hill (Knocked Up, Superbad) to provide the extra set of laughs that make these movies all the more sweet. The stars are almost perfectly cast, with Mila Kunis giving a surprisingly laudable performance as Rachel. Her wit and comic timing was always spot on.

Laugh out loud moments are all over the place. Peter is put in one awkward situation after another by being forced to live in the same vacation resort as Sarah. He is even forced to get to know Aldous, the one man he resents the most. The movie plays well off the intricacies of this situation, setting up one hilarious encounter after another, and surprisingly making it difficult for viewers to hate any particular character in the process. This is a true testament to Jason Segel’s skills in character development.

The problem with the movie is that the formula for this form of comedy is starting to feel very familiar. They seem to be going to more extreme lengths now for laughs, focusing more on sex-based laughs and nudity (from full nude frontal shots to fake orgasms), but the comic timing and wit that made previous movies of this vein like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Superbad so unique and pleasantly surprising is now making Forgetting Sarah Marshall less funny in the same breath. Even without knowing that Judd Apatow or his writers were behind this, in some way you could pretty much guess it. At the same time, the movie manages to remain fresh on the back of its relationship drama. In the midst of all the laughs, Forgetting Sarah Marshall succeeds as an exposition on heartbreak as well. Usually in movies, a scene is hilarious and not heartwarming, or heartwarming and not hilarious. A movie that in one scene gives a genuinely touching commentary on relationships and still stays uproariously funny is something that is rarely seen; Forgetting Sarah Marshall should be applauded for pulling this off almost effortlessly.

This movie is so far the funniest of 2008. You will likely not find another movie guaranteed to give you this many laughs until August when Judd Apatow’s next offering, The Pineapple Express, arrives. Even as Appatow’s formula starts to show age and drag some scenes down, you’ll be totally happy with this movie by the time the hilarious extras start playing during the credits.

Within 24 hours of beginning development, a group of less than twenty MIT Shakespeare Ensemble members had written a script, formed a cast, rehearsed it, made costumes, built a set, and completed everything else that a play needs. It all went down in 34-101, a lecture hall usually used for classes rather than plays. A very odd place to stage a play.

However, the lights and the setting made the audience forget where they were and engaged them in the quest of William Shakespeare, played by Christopher Stephenson ’09. The narrator, Matthew Peairs ’09, eased the audience into Shakespeare’s time, making them believe that they knew what had happened during that period. But he soon shocked us by throwing the audience into the story and legend of Shakespeare, not as a playwright and actor, but as a Vampire Hunter.

The plot starts out with a cliché: Shakespeare is found working hard to come up with script ideas and his wife is turned into a Vampire by Kit Marlowe, the evil Vampire Queen played by Bianca Farrell ’11. As she tries to bite her husband, he kills her. The typical story begins to unfold: Shakespeare does what every loving and devout husband would do, he tries to find and kill Kit Marlowe. Of course he could not do this by himself; by the next act he has stumbled, by coincidence, into a bar where he finds Thomas Kyd, a werewolf and an enemy of Kit Marlowe. Soon his personal revenge coincides with the plans of Gloriana, Queen Elizabeth I of England, played by Laila Wahedi ’11. The evil Vampire Queen has taken a political hostage, Ivana, the Russian concubine. Ana Walden-Brown ’11, in her high stilettos, plays the concubine part with the flavor of an interesting accent and enriches it with beauty, playfulness, and a constant flirting with every man and even the Vampire Queen.

Kellas Cameron ’10 plays the part of Kyd the Werewolf, whom the audience finds out was in love with the Vampire Queen and in the crucial moment where he has her at his mercy, he decides not to kill her. Love for the werewolf was more important than justice and the personal interests of England. Despite the werewolf costume and make up being completely believable, Cameron never once makes the audience lose track of the werewolf’s human side, except perhaps when he howled in pain. The story continues with other characters being introduced, such as Mary, the Queen of Scots played by a man — Arnaldo Pereira-Diaz ’09 — who is worried about the secret of Scotland, a secret that the audience is left wondering about. And of course there are the devout servants of the Queen of Scots: Mary Seaton and Nat played by Grace Kane ’11 and Brianna Conrad ’11, who try to find the evil Vampire Queen and kill her as well, before Shakespeare does it.

The acting was superbly done, considering that everyone had less than 24 hours to memorize their lines. Only in one part of the story did one of the characters forget their part, reminding us of the more human side of our fellow classmates. The audience could follow the feelings of all the characters, from the playful Ivana, to the angry Scots, to the singularly melancholic Werewolf, to the vengeful Shakespeare.

The ending was predictably cliché. Shakespeare saves Ivana the Concubine and Gloriana the Queen, by slaying Marlowe the Evil Vampire Queen, whose last words — with a shriek — are “I’m slain” (making the audience burst into laughter). However, Marlowe had turned Ivana into a vampire, and just as Ivana is about to bite Shakespeare, Nat (Conrad) kills her. The audience’s surprise is unbelievable and soon the play freezes and the narrator, Peairs, comes back and clarifies the situation. Conrad, a MIT Shakespeare Ensemble member had traveled back in time to save Shakespeare — and history — by slaying Ivana; he had done so by playing the most lowly and unassuming part, and just at the critical moment he saves the day, giving the audience its atypical happy ending. Considering the time constraints, the play was well done, the cast was engaging, the plot was twisting and complicated enough to keep our attention, and the setting made us forget the present and immersed us in a different time, the time of William Shakespeare: The Vampire Hunter.