‘Inception’ dazzles the mind.

Did I really see ‘Inception,’ or was it all just a dream?

That’s the feeling I got after watching this movie. The visuals are so out-of-this-world, and the story moves at such a fast pace, that you will feel as if you’ve woken up from a dream yourself. There are only a few films that have had this kind of effect on me (I’m thinking anything made by Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry), and now I can add the latest from Christopher Nolan to that list.

I’m already hearing outcries of “OMG BEST MOVIE EVAR!” (And the current 9.4 rating on IMDB is proof of that.) I’m not sure I’d go that far, but I will say this much: just as Nolan’s recent ‘Batman’ films have reinvigorated a franchise that made too many mistakes in the past, his ‘Inception’ does the same for the summer blockbuster, with its eye-popping special effects and dazzling visuals, but still favors smart and complex storytelling instead of mindless entertainment.

Leonardo Dicaprio plays Cobb, a corporate thief who enters the minds of others’ dreams to take their ideas. Then, he’s hired by a Japanese billionaire named Saito (Ken Watanabe) who wants him to create new ideas within these dreams rather than take them away. He assembles a team that consists of a researcher named Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an impersonator named Eames (Tom Hardy), a chemist named Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and a rookie architect named Ariande (Ellen Page), on loan from Cobb’s father-in-law, played by Michael Caine.

Cobb teaches Ariande how to control dreams and manipulate objects, which is the source for many of the amazing effects you’ve seen in the trailers right now. There’s a scene where Ariande rolls the street of a Paris-like city up like the wall of a small home, and then she and Cobb proceed to walk up it. Cobb wants to use these powers to get another billionaire (Cillian Murphy) who inherited his father’s fortune to give up his empire,
and they do so by travelling through several levels of dreaming, which slow down with each level so that five minutes feels like an hour, etc. Cobb also runs into his late wife (Marion Cotillard) who appears often in his dreams but is way beyond his control.

Confused yet? Well, if you have trouble sitting through a school lecture, chances are ‘Inception’ may not be for you. The film
moves at such a fast pace, that if you blink, you will have missed a major plot point. It’s a film that requires repeat viewings to fully “get,” but that’s a great incentive to see it more.

Personally, I was so astonished by the visuals and so invested in the characters that I didn’t mind if I didn’t understand all of it. It would make a great companion piece to ‘Vanilla Sky’ and ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ two films that also challenged the mind and analyzed the psychology of our dreams and memories, but the difference is that those films focused mainly on the romantic aspects of our thought processes, while ‘Inception’ embraces a more universal approch to dreams that will strike a chord with just about anybody, whether or not they’ve been in love.

Nolan made a name for himself with ‘Memento,” a thriller about a man with short term memory loss and presented in reverse order. Since then, he has created some ingeniously designed and darkly complex movies, be it smaller scale films like ‘Insomnia’ and ‘The Prestige’ or more grandiose blockbuster flims like the recent ‘Batman’ trilogy. While ‘Inception’ is long, it is still a solid and satisyfing thrill ride which has set the bar quite high for the 2010-2019 decade.

***1/2 out of ****

Six film genres that need to die

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I like going to the movies, but it should also be no surprise that Hollywood is at a creative lull right now. Everything is either based on a pre-exisiting source or stolen from better ideas, so the first step will be cleaning out the filth and eliminating the genres that either had their day or were never particularly good to begin with. We all have our own idea of which genres annoy us, but what are the ones I would like to see shot, beaten, and tossed into the river? These are the film genres that I think need to go away.

Before we begin, a few ground rules:

1. I’m only listing the ones that I think no longer serve a purpose and should be done away with. I’m not including romantic comedies or sports films because I don’t think those genres need to die as much as they need to be revitalized.

2. Remember that this is only my opinion. If you happen to disagree, please remain calm and try not to overreact even if you are completely wrong. (That’s a joke, son.)

And now, on with the list:

6. Quentin Tarantino ripoffs

For better and for worse, Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction revolutionized screenwriting with its hip profanity-laden dialogue, highly stylized gangster violence, and out of sequence storytelling. So, what did every aspring screenwriter attempt to do? Make their own movies with hip prfoanity-laden dialogue, highly stylized gangster violence, and out of sequence storytelling. It could’ve been a good idea, but almost none of these films worked. Most of the dialogue was cheesy, the editing was pretentious, and, most importantly, we had seen all of this before (even before Pulp Fiction.) Unless you have fond memories of SFW or The Last Days of Frankie the Fly, it’s best we leave this style of filmmaking alone because, if Tarantino’s recent track record is any indication, even he’s sick of it. Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds ditched the gangster plots in favor of homages to samurai spaghetti westerns and World War II spaghetti westerns respectively. Tarantino is most certainly a good filmmaker, but if you want a truly original film, he’s not the best person to emulate.

5. Torture Porn

This is the term used to describe films like Saw and Hostel, which take us away from the brutal violence seen on local news so that we can relax at the theater to watch beautiful images of on-screen dismemberment and self-mutilation (or at least I think that’s the purpose they’re supposed to serve.) Saw initially created a lot of buzz with its gruesome sadomasochism, that the producers decided to make another one…and then another one…and another one…and another one…and so on, and so forth. The ugly downside is that this is now the default way to make a horror film. Gone are the days of using a chilling atmosphere or subtly creepy villains to create suspense. Now the movies just throw scares at you with graphic content that is destined to delight some people but disgust others. The problem is not so much the content, but rather the lack of decent storytelling, and that’s what made the horror genre so pure to begin with. True, extreme violence in horror movies has been a staple since Night of the Living Dead and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but those at least had smart characters and dialogue; now it’s all just shock and eww. Totrute porn deserves points for its inital gross-out factor, but, like many of its victims, it needs to die a bloody death.

4. Video game adaptations

Super Mario Bros, Street Fighter, Tomb Raider, anything Uwe Boll coughs up…why can’t we learn that, of all the things in the world we could base a movie on, interactive toys with little to no story is the last thing we should base it on? You know the feeling of going to your friend’s house and watching him play a vdieo game for two hours without you touching the controller even once? Now, imagine if the game had little action and mostly pointless cutscenes that never seem to end. That’s the same excitement of watching a video game movie. These films take away from the enjoyment by having no interactivity and going the opposite direction you want them to go in. If only they were more like video games, so that I could enter in a cheat code and skip past all the parts I don’t like (80% of it.)

3. Live action cartoon adaptations

Remember being a kid and watching your favorite cartoons hoping your favorite characters looked more like humans or computer models with bug eyes? No? Well, too bad because Hollywood continues to give you more of it! True, you could aruge that the Flinstones Movie did the best they could in terms of adapting an old cartoon into a live action movie, but that’s still no excuse for the film adaptations of Scooby Doo, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Garfield, or Speed Racer (not to mention the upcoming versions of Yogi Bear, The Smurfs, and Tom and Jerry.) If you really feel nostalgic for your childhood cartoons that badly, I have a solution for you: they’re called DVDs. Most cartoons have been packaged into DVD collections, so you might as wel go out and rent those. The cartoons will look just like you remembered them without the awkward human actors intervening.

2. Frat boy comedies

Oh, the price we pay for making American Pie such a big hit. Not only did we have to deal with subpar sequels, but now we have 4,739 other films where guys act like morons, get ridiculously drunk, and treat women like sex objects (Come on. I have to deal with enough of these people at my own college. Don’t make me have to sit through a whole movie with them.)  With a good idea, these films could work, but since real life frat boys are about as one-note as the scripts, we just have to sit through the same recycled gags and idiot characters. Clearly, a lot of people find this juvenile trash to be comedy gold because Hollywood keeps turning them out. Maybe if we showed them a film on what college is really all about (sitting through a two hour lecture on mitosis), that should scare them away.

1. Spoof movies

This is the extent of creative bankruptcy. When you can’t think of any good ideas,  just rip off a popular idea, pepper it with unfunny jokes, and make a million dollars. “Oh, but it’s satire,” you say. No, satires have humor. The Zucker Brothers got it. Mel Brooks got it. Woody Allen got it. I don’t think any of today’s “spoof movie” writers get it. After Airplane became an enormous success, every untalented hack saw the opportunity to take a popular franchise or genre and include spoofs of other films within it, hoping to score a hit. The result? Plump Fiction, Fatal Instinct, and the Silence of the Hams (I know. These titles are absolutely gut-busting.) I don’t think anybody can deny that the worst purveyors of this crime are Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the men behind Date Movie, Epic Movie, and Disaster Movie (You like these titles? They’re the extent of theses directors’ imaginations.) I can’t describe how low their level of filmmaking is, so I’ll let Josh Levin of Slate do it for me:

“Friedberg and Seltzer do not practice the same craft as P.T. Anderson, David Cronenberg, Michael Bay, Kevin Costner, Zucker, Abrahams, and Zucker, the Wayans Brothers, Uwe Boll, any dad who takes shaky home movies on a camping trip, or a bear who turns on a video camera by accident while trying to eat it. They are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization’s decline…”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

UPDATE: Just when I was having a nice, Friedberg and Seltzer-less year in 2009, they had to ruin my day yet again by promising a new movie: a Twilight spoof called Vampires Suck (Well, at least they’re being honest with their movies by including words like “disaster” and “suck” in the titles.) I didn’t think anything could make me garner any sympathy for Twilight, but this might just do it.

As always, you can expect the following from a Friedberg/Seltzer film:

*In addition to the main genre, a buch of spoofs of other unrelated films that came out two years ago thrown in (but no more than that. The audience can’t recall that far back.)

*Cameos by characters from films that came out less than a year ago spouting lines from the trailers before they become slapstick victims.

*Third rate celebrity impersonations (with characters pointing out who the celebrity is, because we really need it explained to us.)

*Legit actors like Fred Willard or Crispin Glover appearing to collect their paychecks.

* No biting satire whatsoever.

Post #12: WebAdvisor makes registering for classes much more annoying.

In my very first post, I ranted about the DVC website being clunky and lacking in content, but it is a piece of cake compared to the frustrating mess that is WebAdvisor. This being my very last entry, I think this is a perfect way to come full circle. WebAdvisor, consider yourself warned.

Registering for classes is not an easy task. You always have to determine, what classes you should take, when you should take them, what teachers you’d like to take classes with, and consider when to take lunch breaks or homework breaks. It’s not an easy task, but thanks to the Internet, all of this information can be found on the World Wide Web. Sounds great, doesn’t it? It does, but do you know who DVC chose as their registration website? WebAdvisor!

What’s wrong with it? Let me walk you through my personal experience of registering for classes.

The first thing you see when you open the page is the login menu asking for your student ID and password. It’s been four months since I last used this abomination, so I enter the numerical ID number on my student card and what I assume my passowrd is and then click “submit.”

What’s this? “Username not found in the registry?” I click on user ID help, and it says this:

“Your WebAdvisor username (User ID) is derived using the first letter of your first name, followed by your last name then the last 3 digits of your Student ID.
For example, if your name is John Doe and your Student ID is 0000123, your username would be jdoe123.”

Oh yeah, because that’s easy to remember! Why don’t you throw in my birthdate and last four digits of my social security number while you’re at it?

Actually, this rant doesn’t matter because you will be able to remember your username after you’ve signed in 10 times during ONE session. More on that later.

Finally, I get to the main page and click on “Current students.” There’s all kinds of stuff relating to financial aid, transcripts, and current grades.

That’s nice, but I just want to register for classes.

There is the “Registration” category, and a number of options: you can search for sections, drop sections, search AND register for sections among other options. The first time visiting, you would instinctively click on “search” because that’s what you want to do. Couldn;t they have just called it “register for sections”? If you’re searching for sections, chances are you’re probably trying to register for them too! A minor complaint, but let’s move forward.

So, you select your classes (for some reason there are three categories for journalism. Why?) and put a schedule together, but it won’t register you for your classes until you click on register, which is hidden in a drop-down menu. Why can’t it be its own button? When did this idea of simple convenience become too much of a hassle for webmaster.

The most annoying thing about WebAdvisor is how you have to sign in again after you spend just a few minutes away from the mouse. Why would I not click the mouse? Oh, maybe because I’m trying to decide which class is right for me! It’s really annoying that you have to keep signing in. My guess is WebAdvisor wants you to remember your username.

I could go all day on this. My advice would be for the Contra Costa Community College district to adopt a web registration program that isn’t so frustrating to use. Otherwise, we’ll have to go back to the days when we stand in line to sign up for classes, and that’s the last thing we want to do.

Post #11: The end is so close, I can taste it.

When you’re a kid, all you can think about is being in high school. When you’re in high school, all you can think about is being in college. When you’re in college, all you can think about is being an adult, and when you’re an adult, all you can think about is being a kid again. Isn’t it funny how life works that way?

I say this because I am in my first semester at DVC, and I am already looking forward to my month-long vacation. I have become the equivalent of a high school senior experiencing “senioritis,” but the only difference is I still do my work, as much as I’d rather be doing something else. Anything would be preferrable. With finals coming up, it’s just another major speedbump to my vacation.

When you’ve taken five classes like me, you understand what it means to receive such an enormous workload. I’ve sacrificed weekends, turned down plans with friends, and was even scolded by my mother for spending too much time in my room. I have often put my work aside to engage in other activities, but when I’m away from the house for extended periods of time, I often look at my watch and say, “Oh no! My essay is due on Tuesday and I have so little time today and tomorrow to work on it!”

Excuse me for a second.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

I’m okay. Apart from outbursts like that, I have managed to cope with the endless amount of assignments I’ve received. To help beat the stress, I’ve decided to dispense a little bit of advice for my peers to follow:

1. HAVE A SCHEDULE READY. You could spend your entire weekend doing fun things, but you’ll have done no homework, or you could spend the entire weekend doing your homework, but what you’ll have is a weekend lost. Put a schedule together, so you’ll have a set time to complete your homework AND hang with friends or do other things. It will make for a productive, but also enjoyable few days off.

2. TAKE BREAKS FROM YOUR WORK. Your ideas will flow easier if you spend time away from your computer. As focused as you may be on your assignment, don’t feel you have to stare at your screen to get ideas. Stand up, take walks, and read books. This will make the writing process a whole lot easier.

3. PLAN EARLY. If you wake up early and have nothing else to do, it would probably be a good idea to finish whatever you may be working on. This will leave you with more time to do whatever you want afterwards.

I hope these lessons come in handy for my readers (all three of them.) Me? I’m just looking forward to a few weeks from now when I won’t have to worry about such assignments.

Post #10: DVC choir lifts spirits

On November 21, DVC’s Masterworks Chorale brought a somber but uplifting variety choral tunes ranging from early Baroque classics (Gabrielli and Monteverdi) to modern American harvest songs (“We Gather Together” and “The Road Home”) The singers, young and old, poured their voices out, and the end result was astounding.
The first piece performed was “In Ecclesiis” by Giovanni Gabrielli. It opened with an organ played at an adagietto tempo with the singers standing in the aisles of the Performing Arts Center. They all sang at a piano dynamic with each section singing a different part. After a couple of opera singers performed the melody with various voices, all of the voices joined in and sang the melody. The brass section then repeated the melody in a clear demonstration of imitative polyphony. The vocalists then sang the same melody, but a bit softer than before and sung in tune with the instruments, creating a polyphonic sound. After a few lines, the brass section then played its own melody, making this piece heterophonic.

Another notable performance was that of Carol Barnett’s American harvest tune, “Cindy.” What made this stand out was the integration of the choral voices with an acoustic guitar. It was sung at an andantino tempo with each section singing “Cindy” in a hocket style. The bass voices rose above all of the others and acted as a stark contrast from the lively mezzo forte voices.

This was a nice treat from the DVC Masterworks Chorale and, while not the most entertaining performance to watch, the singers were able to project their amazing vocal talents, creating a sense of awe. The darkness of the room was a perfect antithesis of the bright voices being heard onstage. I came in, not knowing what to expect, and with voices so powerful, I nearly forgot that I spent $20 just to get in.

Post #9: Baby, it’s cold inside

We’ve reached the point in the year where anybody who steps outside will be forced to brave the cold winter weather. Thankfully, there exists an invention called indoor heating. It’s quite a relief to escape the cold weather by walking into a warm building, and most of the buildings at DVC are well-equipped with indoor heating.

Except one.

The music building, located just a few steps from the duck pond and not far from the Student Union building, always seems to be cold no matter what time of year it is. It’s fine for the summer, but this is the middle of November. It’s hard sitting in M-110 when you’re freezing. What’s the point for this? Am I supposed to feel the way Beethoven did when he was writing symphonies during the winter? The lack of heating makes it harder to withstand a long lecture.

I’m not alone in this opinion. Music instructor Bruce Cook says, “I’m getting over a cold, and I feel like I just walked into a refrigerator. I don’t know why it is this way.”

So, as routine as it may be to complain about the lack of heating, it is a good thing to think about. If other buildings on campus can utilize their heating, why can’t the music building. Our students should not have to suffer. So, music department, if you’re reading this, find out who runs your building, and get the problem fixed.

Post #8: Money, money, money

Tuition: $26 per unit.

Cummulative textbook total: $120 (Some might acutally say that’s cheap.)

Four slices of mediocre pizza: $4

A bus ride on County Connection from school to the Pleasant Hill BART: $2

A bus ride on Baylink from PH BART to Benicia: $4.50

Realizing that college sucks away more of your money than grade school: priceless.

This is not a MasterCard commercial. This is my life at DVC.

Yes, it seems just one day here can empty my entire wallet by the time I’ve opened my front door. It’s actually brought my bank account to a total of $20, and I refuse to withdraw money until that amount grows. Instead, I’ve had to leech off my parents each week, and I feel guilty for it. I feel like I’m taking money from their savings, but there’s not much of an alternative. I don’t want to lug a lunch cooler around campus. Also, I live across the Carquinez Bridge and don’t drive, so I have to resort to public transportation. I’m not faulitng DVC for this (though the cafeteria food is ridiculously overinflated for what it is), but it has more to do with my individual spending. You see, DVC teaches you a lot, but one day of spending money is a great economics lesson in and of itself.

In my high school economics class, I learned about opportunity cost, which is the major thing given up in an economic decision. I wrote it off as one of those economist catchphrases that I would never use, and I had already forgotten about it by the time the semester ended, and I made the transition to the more interesting U.S. government (as was required by my schedule.) Now, I understand how important these decisions are in college life. It’s especially important to know during a time of drastic economic fluctuation.

So, you’ve already shelled out an unholy amount of money just to enroll at DVC. What do you do next to ensure your wallet always has a sustainable amount of money? Consider the following options:

1. DON’T SPEND MONEY. This is the easiet and best solution, but it’s not the easiest to come by. If you live in Pleasant Hill, Concord, or Walnut Creek and own a car, you can avoid having to pay for public transportation. Bringing your own lunch will also provide a reasonable alternative to the overpriced cafeteria. However, if you live across the Carquinez like I do, you will have to pay a toll each day. This is where a FasTrack pass will come in handy.

2. SPEND LESS FREQUENTLY OUTSIDE OF SCHOOL. That bag of Fritos you saw in a convenience store? That hoodie you’ved been eyeing in Abercrombie & Fitch? Those can wait, especially if you have little to no money in your bank account. Spend the money you do have on your own school necessities.

3. FIND CHEAPER LUNCH OPTIONS. As much as I hate McDonald’s, burger enthusiasts would be more apt to go there because their Quarter Pounders are only three dollars: about a dollar cheaper than the burgers at DVC. Off-campus, several restaurants can be found within walking distance, but because of rising inflation, everything might be more expensive. Comparing prices to those of DVC’s will be useful in determining lunch options. If you prefer staying on-campus, there is the Norseman Cafe, which serves food prepared by the culinary class at $1 to $2.50. The food is quite decent, which makes it a welcome alternative to the cafeteria food.

I’m sure you can think of more. The bottom line is: these are crucial times, and you need to spend wisely. Don’t let the money in your pockets shrink until it eventually disappears.

Post #7: Everybody loves nostalgia!

“Here we are now, entertain us”- Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (1991)

Let’s face it: in this day and age, we’re not happy. How can we be at a time of recession, war, and political division? Unemployment is fluctuating, educational budgets are suffering, and the swine flu continues to hit people hard. Ain’t life grand?

If you need further proof on peoples’ unhappiness (as well as proof that our society has no defining culture), just check out the shirts people wear which seems to indicate they’d rather be living in a time period before theirs. In high school, it was rock t-shirts for 60s and 70s bands like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd. Here at DVC, it’s 80s cartoons, movies, and accessories. I can’t walk through the quad without seeing people wearing Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Pac-Man T-shirts. That’s all fine and good, but remember that these people weren’t even born during this time. Some were even born in 1991– four years after the cancellation of Transformers! What is going on here?

It’s been well-established that this generation has an attachment to nostalgia (Hence, Vh-1’s “I Love the…” series), but can it really be considered nostalgic if today’s college students don’t have any recollection of these artifacts? Granted, it’s probably not nostalgia as these people did buy DVD boxed sets in their adult life because of some recent revival. Transformers has experienced a surge in popularity, thanks to the popular live action movie remakes by Michael Bay. Likewise, the Ninja Turtles do have a current cartoon series out, but would any of these things exist if there were anything to truly get excited about? I think not.

That’s another point: today’s art has become so incredibly boring. The music you hear on the radio is generic, movies come and go, and TV offers very little in the way of entertainment. Yes, there are still good songs, movies, and TV shows, but the good ones are pushed out of the limelight by projects that should never have seen the light of day. Movies especially don’t offer very much in the way of originality. Think about it: when was the last time you saw a movie that wasn’t based off a pre-existing source?

That is why we love the past, even if we weren’t alive to experience it. It pains me to think that today’s 10-and-under set will have grown up on High School Musical and Hannah Montana, instead of Animaniacs, Freakazoid, and other series that entertained children but still hold up for today’s adults. When nothing nowadays seems to be enthralling today’s youth, it’s easy to understand why they will go back and discover the things they would have grown up with had they been alive at that time.

 

However, the majority simply love the past because nothing right now is what it used to be. Will we see people wearing Kim Possible t-shirts 20 years from now? We’ll have to wait and see.

Love for nostalgia isn’t a bad thing, but it’s an indicator that today’s generation is displeased with current times. When I see DVC students wearing the t-shirts of things not from their childhoods, I see it as them making a statement about the lack of genuine entertainment right now. We need a revolution in all areas (music, film, television, literature, and politics) to take us away from this misery. Anybody willing to rise up and accept this challenge will forever be my hero.

Post #4: Arts are crucial to education

One of the things that I like about DVC more than high school is the wide array of classes offered. Need a science class? There’s a lot of subjects to choose from. What about journalism? Oh, there’s plenty of those too. Let’s not forget about the many appealing classes that just simply aren’t offered at the high school level (or at least not at the one I went to): film criticism and history, American pop culture, and TV studio production are the types of classes that students who are passionate about the subjects can take and be excited to learn about.

Unfortunately, with the budget crisis, DVC will have to make some difficult sacrifices, and those are very prevalent in the art and music departments. This is a shame because art and music give students a chance to express their talents, and without the proper educational support, those talents will not be allowed to flourish. Yes, they could take art or music lessons from private tutors or instructors, but those cost money, and some might benefit more from working in groups than individual instruction.

So, what changes will the music department be forced to make? Here’s a list:

• Reduced jazz and popular voice to one time per year.
• Cut section of beginning guitar.
• Cut sections of beginning piano for summer classes.
• Cut rock and r&b history for the summer.
• Cut jazz piano.

Glenn Appell, music department teacher, feels “disappointed that classes only offered once or twice a year are now being removed entirely. This is not the direction we want to go in.”

He’s right. In K-12 school districts, art and music programs are usually the first to be cut, but these classes prepare students for the future just as much as the basic essentials (English, history, science, and math) Art courses give students a chance to find their passion and apply it to the real world. For those who may not succeed in traditional subjects like math or science, art and music allow for students to succeed with creativity and even help benefit the community (Would that house you live in exist without the use of art? I think not.)

So, art and music should not take the majority of the cuts. They should be spread around so that all divisions share the pain. Just remember that when art/music programs are cut, the victims do not heal.

Post #6: Urinetown is phenomenal with a capital “Pee” (or Little Sally in 2012!)

As most people who know me have already learned, I do not enjoy musicals. I know they’re supposed to be magical and uplifting, but they’re actually just downright depressing once you realize that somehow getting everyone within eyeshot to sing a song does NOT solve your problems. Also, getting everyone to engage in a synchronized dance and be able to form a coherent song on the spot is just not plausible. There are a few humble exceptions (like “Avenue Q”), but the musical aspect of musicals is not my cup of tea, but a really good idea can carry a lot of weight, as you’ll see in DVC’s adaptation of the Mark Hollman musical comedy “Urinetown.”

I’ve never actually seen the Broadway show from which this is based, but if what I saw on the DVC stage was any indication, it’s probably one of the better musicals I’ve seen. The story centers on a corporation called Urine Good Company (get it?), which charges the citizens of an unnamed city to use public bathrooms in an effort to control water consumption. Those who fail to comply are exiled to a penal colony called–what else?– Urinetown headed by the dictorial Penelope Pennywise (Elizabeth Curtis). Problems arise when Penelope’s assistant, Bobby Strong (Stephen Foreman), falls in love with the CEO of UGC’s daughter, Hope Caldwell (Holly Kenney). After an increase in fees, Strong deicdes that the laws are unjust and encourages the inhabitants of Urinetown to stage a rebellion by using the bathroom without paying. As with all rebellions, chaos does ensue, but if you really want to know what happens, you’ll have to see for yourself.

Overall, this was a very entertaining story which poked fun at capitalism, populism, revolts, and unwise business decisions, all without being too explicit or preachy. The dialogue was quite funny at times, and the story never took itself too seriously, often satirizing musicals themselves (mostly done in the “fourth wall” segments with Officer Lockstock and Little Sally.) Even if you’re not a fan of musicals, the witty observations in the script should be enough to keep you interested.

However, this is just the story I’m talking about. What could DVC possibly do to stand out? Well, the cast is very engaging, and they obviously look like they had loads of fun performing this play. With their high levels of energy and tremendous singing and acting talent, the effort is unmistakeable. Curtis played a very devious but likeable Penelope Pennywise, Foreman was incredibly endearing in his performance as Bobby Strong, and Kenney was simply adorable as Hope Caldwell. Even the extras were good at being extras, providing appropriate facial expressions and working hand in hand with the other actors. Still, if I had to pick a favorite performance, I would definitely choose Melody Perera as Little Sally, the know-it-all six-year-old, who frequently pointed out the story’s flaws. Perera was not only believeable in this role but also incredibly funny in her portrayl of the precocious youngster we’ve all known at some point. In fact, her character might actually have more sense than most of the adult characters in this play!

So, bravo DVC drama department for selecting an entertaining play and giving your talented, young performers a chance to shine! For those who want to see it, the show will continue until Nov. 8 with performances on Friday and Saturday evenings at 8 p.m. and Sunday afternoons at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $12 for students who show IDs, $14 for general admission, and $17 for advanced seating. All performances will be held in DVC’s Performing Arts Center, located on 321 Golf Club Road in Pleasant Hill. For more information, contact the box office at 925-687-4445.

P.S., thank you, Melody, for giving this blog so many hits. That’s right, I see your search results.