Jemaine Clement plays famed science fiction author Dr. Ronald Chevalier in Gentlemen Broncos. Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight.

When Jerusha and Jared Hess released their film Napoleon Dynamite, few could really explain its plot or nature. “An introvert from Idaho helps his Mexican friend run for class president” does not very well characterize the ingenuity or comedy behind one of the biggest movies of the decade. With their third movie, Gentlemen Broncos, the Hess brothers have again crafted a plot that does little to explain the overall draw of the film. Unfortunately, this time the strategy does not hold up nearly as well.

Set in a similar universe to Napoleon Dynamite, the story unfolds in an unnamed town in the rural American Mountain West that time has forgotten, where everyone’s dress and lifestyles are twenty years out of fashion and the characters are so weird, you wonder if they could really exist. Benjamin (Michael Angarano) lives alone with his mother (Jennifer Coolidge) and writes immature science fiction novels instead of making friends. He goes off to a special writing camp where he meets his hero, Chevalier (Jemaine Clement), one of the most famous writers in science fiction. Here Benjamin meets a host of wacky, borderline-grotesque friends while Chevalier steals and publishes Ben’s work.

For the first twenty minutes, everything is hilarious. The inhuman weirdness of every last character in the movie is so awkward and strange that one cannot help but smile and spout one “wtf!?”-laugh after another. The best part, far and away, is Jemaine Clement’s (Flight of the Conchords) turn as Chevalier. Every expression on his face and word out of his mouth is a gift. Most Conchords fans will probably enjoy the movie just for the opportunity to see Jemaine on screen.

The movie’s other star power comes from Sam Rockwell, who plays Bronco, the star of Benjamin’s novel. Interspersed throughout the movie are short takes from the sci-fi novel. Each sequence is made to look like a terrible 1970’s outer-space spaghetti western. Again, these are hilarious at first but soon grow tiresome.

Once you are acquainted with the characters’ reality and the writers attempt to guide the script towards a point of drama and climax, things fall flat. The drama and character development barely escalate and the audience must settle for 90 minutes of the same oddities. Laughs become few and far between, and there is no triumphant finale to even approach the bar set by Napoleon’s dance scene.

The movie is a beautiful trip into a strange and pitiful universe that can only be created by this cast and crew. Even so, the inconsistent start-to-finish experience and lacking level of engagement makes this one better for DVD or streaming than the big screen.

Bottom Line: an absolute breakthrough in the art of awkward, but an unpolished film as a whole.
Grade::B-

Facebook, Google and many other websites provide free services that you probably couldn’t live without, and without any hidden fees. Here are some of the best free online services and downloads that could benefit any student’s daily life.

Mint.com:

I’m going to start with Mint.com not only because it is my favorite at the moment but because I am convinced that it can change your life.

Mint is not a download but a free online service for financial planning. It isn’t the first of its kind, nor is it without competition, but for the average student’s needs, Mint can do wonders.

The online financial service exploded in popularity with over a million users within its first year of operation and the people who make Quicken promptly acquired it. In the company’s words, Mint allows you to “see where you’re spending, lower your interest rates, decide where to cut back and reduce debt.”

Not all of this applies to everyone, but the important thing is that you can view all of your transactions, arrange and categorize them, plan budgets and track all of your spending.

You provide Mint with read-only access to your bank information (which it establishes through secure connections to the banks themselves). It will automatically log all of your transactions with the date, amount and category. The site then allows you to see your spending in living color with customizable graphs and ledgers.

Doing all of this in Excel would be nearly impossible, but Mint does all the accounting for you, giving you a full balance sheet so that you can manage your finances and/or impress your parents. As an added bonus, Mint also will recommend savings accounts and credit cards that best match your spending habits. Mint manages to make personal finance fun and addictive, and most importantly, can help you to save money in the long run at no cost.

VLC Media Player:

All the techies reading already know this one. VLC media player has been hailed as one of the greatest free downloads ever. It is a no frills, simple to use media player for music and movies.

Aside from being infinitely cleaner and quicker to use than most pre-packaged media players on Mac or PC, it has one key advantage–VLC plays everything. No need to download codec packs or plugins, VLC already does it. Anything from a DVD to a downloaded movie to a cell phone video will run easily, allowing you to breathe easily about sharing files with friends and pull things from the web.

This may sound lame, but take the two minutes to download this one and let the program do the rest. Mac or PC welcome.

Quicksilver/Colibri:

Computers these days have an unprecedented potential for shortcuts. From the added interface features of Windows 7 to the multi-touch functionality of Macbooks, there are many ways to do your part to make computing quicker and more efficient if you’re willing to take the time to learn the shortcuts.

One of the easiest ways to do this (and with the smallest learning curve) is to install Quicksilver (Mac only) or its similar Windows counterpart, Colibri. Quicksilver is simply a launcher, much like Apple’s Spotlight. However, Quicksilver takes quick-searching one step further by keeping a close watch on your most-trafficked programs and files. It learns what you do.

Let’s say I wanted to open up Firefox. I would hit Apple+Space with my thumbs, begin typing f-i-r, and hit enter all in the space of half a second. This chain of action becomes an intuitive process before long. The same would work for any file on the computer.

Additionally, Quicksilver has plugins for programs like iTunes that allow you to hit a different shortcut and begin typing while the computer searches through your music library and then launches the file in iTunes. Again, this one is customizable and very much shaped by user experience.

Log Me In:

Log Me In is best suited to the technically-inclined, but can come in handy for anyone who still uses their computer back home. Log Me In is remote desktop software –i t allows you to access another computer over the Web from anywhere in the world.

If you install it on a desktop at home and then on your laptop, for example, you could fully control the desktop from your laptop. If you really need a file that you forgot to put on your laptop, you can email it over to yourself remotely. If you have a program at home that you can’t use on your laptop, you can run it through remote desktop. Last year, I used this program extensively.

Finally, if you need to do anything that won’t fly with the Northwestern servers, you can do it remotely — you’ll be using your home web connection. If you find you have the need for remote access, this is the program to turn to.

Google Docs:

Now for the sleeper hit of the day — Google Docs.

The entire Google suite deserves to be on this list. From Gmail (imagine life without it) to Reader to Voice to Calender, everything Google provides is free.

Docs may seem too obvious to mention, but most people know Docs as a way to collaborate and share work online. What I’d like to highlight is Google Docs as a free word processor. Everyone takes for granted that new computers require 100-200 dollar word processors such as Word or Pages. Google Docs accomplishes most of the same things but for zero dollars.

Plus, you can take all of your class notes on Google Docs. They will be accessible from anywhere in the world and take up no hard drive space.

Once Google takes on some of the more advanced features that Word offers, we may begin to rethink our most common computing task — word processing.

John Meguerian contributed reporting to this piece.

Tonight is a big night for Michael and Michael. 20-plus years into their prolific careers in television and stand-up comedy, Comedy Central will give the first season of their series Michael and Michael Have Issues a second spin to see if they can gain new viewers for the show, which initially ran in the summer. After all the duo has done for the network, and for comedy in general, they have yet to break out as mainstream names. It is an interesting phenomenon of comedy how some fans, myself included, can be absolutely obsessed with an act that others have never heard of. Comedy Central is out to make sure the world knows Michael and Michael.

Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter are two thirds of the troupe known as Stella, the third member being director David Wain. The three began in an NYU-based group called The State who had a three-season series on MTV. Most of the members are now familiar to viewers of their new show, Reno 911 and other various films. Michael, Michael and David went on to create the classic Wet Hot American Summer and then the TV series Stella. Michael Ian Black’s biggest role was becoming a regular on Vh1’s I love the…series, for which he constantly reminds people he is “very famous.”

Now, however, Michael and Michael are in a very different place. They are taking a break from their partner David Wain, who recently directed the smash hit Role Models with Paul Rudd. Instead, the two have created their own series MMHI. Michael Black describes MMHI as an attempt to do something more believable and relatable than previous efforts. “Stella is a very absurd, surreal and raw show,” Black said. “MMHI is more grounded and situational. With Stella a lot of people didn’t understand what we were doing, so we tried to identify for ourselves why people didn’t get it, and we took steps to make [MMHI] more accessible.” Showalter added that “not everyone found what we were doing to be that funny, which is problematic when you’re a comedian.”

By the end of season one of MMHI, there was a consensus amongst reviewers that the show was “good, not great,” or as the Los Angeles Times put it, “consistently amusing in a low-boil way while rarely breaking into brilliance.” I would say this is a little unfair — the show did in fact have moments of brilliance. However, only a handful of episodes stood out. The network likes the show enough to give it a full encore run, which could possibly determine the fate of the series. “[Comedy Central] is claiming that this has nothing to do with [picking the show up for a new season],” Showalter said. “They are re-airing it because they like it and want more people to see it, but obviously since we haven’t been picked up yet, you get the feeling that there may be a correlation.”

It would seem that Michael and Michael are stuck in the battle between art and ratings that is a sad part of the reality of television. They made the show they wanted to make, Stella, and found a small audience who loved it and a large audience that felt excluded. MMHI followed up with broader but less emphatic approval. Meanwhile, Comedy Central is creating new shows for comedians like Jeff Dunham with a tamer comedy style but greater (blue-collar) appeal. “They want to be a comedy network for everybody, and a lot of people like that stuff,” Black said.

There are networks out there that would accept shows for more narrow audiences. Adult Swim, for example, runs shows that earn only 10,000 or so viewers, and can afford to do so with shows like Family Guy to pad the bill. When I asked Michael and Michael if they would ever produce a show for Adult Swim, Showalter said “absolutely” while Black said “not really.” “Michael Black would if they paid him his fee,” Showalter joked.

It seems the next steps for Michael and Michael will be dependent on the renewal of this show, for which they are already writing scripts. When I asked if they were feeling positive at this point in time, Black said they were “optimistic, viridiscent and omniscent.”

“What do you want us to say, that we’re miserable?” Showalter said. Hard to say. While the two scoffed at the question, the evidence indicates otherwise. Black’s last posts on his personal blog share that their live tour, “is not going well. For the first time in our moderately illustrious careers, we’re having attendance problems.”

More recently, Black discussed his chronic depression, and how he feels “less like an artist and more like a hustler,” and that “ideally, [he] would like to just disappear for a while.” On the phone, Showalter told me (in an ambiguously serious tone) that he is entering his “recluse phase.”

“I’m trying to move to the countryside–like farm country,” he said.

While things are certainly up in the air for the Michaels, their past indicates that they have the resilience to pull through almost anything. Despite a long list of short-lived projects, the two have been performing together for most of their lives and have taken on more work across more media than any other comedians. Whether they find their new big hit or a home for their beloved cult-of-personality, I have faith that these two will continue keep us laughing.

The encore run of Michael and Michael Have Issues begins tonight at 8:30 central.

Correction: The original version of this article stated that The State ran on Comedy Central. It actual ran on MTV. Thanks to commenter Cecil Porter.

Stella:
Below is one choice episode of Stella, the tv series. All 10 episodes are available on Hulu, which is where you get your TV. Kill some time, why don’t you.

A Stella Short:
featuring Bradley Cooper

The Michael Showalter Showalter, an original internet series on Collegehumor.com:

Michael Ian Black on VH1’s “I love the 90s”:
Doing his thing.

Showalter’s Parody Ad for the 92YTribeca:

Reality on Dragonforce. Photo by author.

It all started with a game of Guitar Hero II. A friend of mine had just picked up a copy of the game and I was eager to try it out. However, as we worked through our first virtual “set list,” my disappointment grew. In the absence of good hard rock songs there were strange and unfamiliar metal and prog rock songs. I was not pleased.

For the big encore, we were presented with a song called “YYZ” by the holy trinity, Rush. I had heard of this song before; I knew it had a cult following amongst certain geeky circles and that it was voted best bass performance of all time. The song was obscure from the start: a strange percussive tone chimed out like Morse code in a 10/8 time signature. Soon the bass and guitar matched the pattern with terrifying tritones — a musical interval once associated with the devil. I can’t recall my exact reaction, but it went something like:

“What the **** is the deal with all these ****ing progressive rock songs in this stupid ****ing game!! Why do all these metal dorks love this **** so ****ing much!? How about a normal classic rock song once in a ****ing while? Why can’t the ****heads who make this game license a real ****ing song!!!” I was furious.

But this was over a year ago, and “YYZ” by Rush has consistently appeared on my iPod’s “Recently Played” playlist ever since.

This love-hate phenomenon seems inexplicable, but it has happened more and more ever since. My cynical nature gets me into these situations where a song would so incense me that I would show it to people as a joke, cursing its ridiculousness, and ye the more I listened to it out of anger…the more I wanted to listen to it. My hatred slowly waned and I began to see the better qualities of the song. I noticed how funky it was. There was room in my heart for Rush instrumentals after all.

These paranomal happenings pursued me in the coming months. I started listening to darker metal acts like Buckethead and Iron Maiden. I started playing bass like Les Claypool of Primus (of the South Park theme song), one of the strangest musical acts around. It seemed the more I laughed at the insanity of a certain over-the-top group, the more they caught my interest. Before long, I picked up a bright red Ibanez guitar and a vintage Metallica “Ride the Lightning” shirt with a skeleton in the electric chair. I was changing attitudes.

Still, I had trouble accepting my newfound interests and how unclean this music made me feel. I would go to temple on the high holidays listening to songs like “The Number of the Beast” by Iron Maiden. I put on power metal bands like Dragonforce during my walks to school. No matter how terrible “Through the Fire and the Flames” is, it still turned every morning into an adventure (and cut about five minutes off of my walk time). I’ll never forget when my friend asked, “should I be worried that you are listening to this kind of music?” Yes, probably.

Nowadays, I listen to songs like these in half-seriousness and I embrace the strangeness of my ways. But who can really determine the difference between loving a song and loving to hate one? Musical inhibitions can crumble away faster than a Steve Vai guitar solo. Just how many times can I Rickroll my friends with a link to Slayer’s “Raining Blood” or Dream Theater’s “Panic Attack” before it’s no longer a joke?

I believe my story has a moral: Don’t worry too much about what you listen to, how you should feel about it and what others think of it. All you need to remember is that the only bad music to listen to is no music at all.

And Miley Cyrus.

Also, check out their cover of Earth Wind and Fire’s “September.”

1. Touch my Body

This is the latest in a long line of classic “Karaoke Fails.” This young boy is singing along to Mariah Carey’s “Touch my Body.” Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite have the range, among other things.

2. Flash Mobs!

Japan — always keeping things exciting. Here is an older video that falls under the category of great massive demonstrations on tape. What’s more curious, however, is this imitation video:

3. Jonas Brothers‘ Foam!

Use your imagination.

Don’t let this happen to you. Photo by the author.

Much to the disappointment of many professors, the majority of Northwestern students bring their laptops to class these days. Taking neat digital notes and having the internet as a resource are wonderful advantages over old-fashioned notebooks. Unfortunately, most laptops can only pull two or three hours of work. If you’ve ever had three straight classes in powerless lecture rooms (or if you’ve forgotten to charge your laptop before class) you’ve probably watched your computer click off mid-lecture. As a victim of the five-hour class block with a two-hour laptop battery, I found a lot of useful steps that every student can follow to make it through the day.

1. Ride the brightness

Every laptop has an adjustable brightness switch that allows it to turn the backlight on the screen up or down. The light that illuminates the screen is actually one of the biggest drains on the battery and needs to be treated as such. Always keep brightness at a minimum (making sure you can still see). In personal trials, I found about a 25-minute difference in battery life between running at full brightness and minimum brightness. Also, don’t be afraid to jockey the switch periodically. It can be very helpful to cut the lighting to zero during a long stretch of lecture that you just don’t think requires note taking. It happens. If you are pretty certain you’ll have such a grace period, you can also try putting it to sleep.

2. Put it to sleep

Your computer undoubtedly has a sleep mode or hibernate function that puts the laptop on standby, saving your work so that it will pop right back up once you wake the thing up again. This is especially important when power is low since sleep mode (Mac) or standby (PC) uses almost no power at all — just a touch to keep the RAM ticking.

3. Less wireless

Wireless internet reception takes a lot of battery life — several watts per day. Arguably the most efficient thing you could do to save power would be to keep the WiFi off whenever possible. Same goes for Bluetooth, which you may not even use unless you’re zapping pictures of Lolcats to your neighbors in class, so make sure that’s off at all times.

4. Close things

This may seem like a no-brainer, but every program the computer is running will take up energy. Start with the obvious and close anything you aren’t using. Major programs like Photoshop or iTunes (it happens) are a major drain on power, and even Word and Firefox are large programs. Once that is out of the way, check your dock or start bar and look out carefully for anything you didn’t know was running. It’s easy to minimize a program and forget about it, so you never know when Skype and iPhoto are trucking away somewhere out of view. Another good way to get even more specific…

5. Monitor

Any psych professor will tell you that people act differently when they can closely monitor what they are doing. You’ll focus a lot more on fuel economy when your Prius is displaying all the minute details about your engine and battery. The same goes for the computer. Download a monitor program such as iStat or Informer — free widgets that tell you what’s going on in your computer. You can see how much memory each process is using and act accordingly. Also, these programs will tell you your battery’s health level, which is the most important statistic of all. And if you have really poor health…

6. Buy a new battery

Nothing lasts forever, and laptop batteries are no exception. In fact, they are generally expected to be operating at about 80 percent after one or two years. If you find that you’re getting poor mileage, you may have to bite the bullet and get a replacement battery for about $80-$130 depending on the manufacturer. Before you buy one, make sure to call your PC manufacturer’s customer service or visit the Apple Store if it’s a Mac. If your battery is in poor health and the computer is new, under warranty or if they are feeling friendly, you may get a new one for free.

7. Keep it plugged in

Whenever you can use an outlet, such as in the dorms, keep the laptop plugged in. Battery life is measured in cycles — each time you drain and refill the battery cells, it ticks off as one cycle. The more cycles you go through, the more likely you are to wear out the health, meaning that the battery capacity will gradually decrease. If you keep it fully charged and plugged in when possible, the computer will draw electricity straight from the charger and won’t wear out the battery. Don’t get too anal about this one, but it is useful to know.

And, if all else fails:

8. Get a Macbook Pro

All of the new Macbooks have built-in batteries with 7-9 hours of battery life. Those things are crazy. If you can’t afford to go Mac, read carefully into the specs of any new laptop and see how many cells the battery has, as well as the expected life. Just be careful to avoid the B.S. of “up to X hours” and only use that figure in relation to other computers to see if it is above or below average.

#9, voiced by Elijah Wood, battles the Fabrication Machine in Shane Acker’s animated film 9. Photo courtesy of Focus Features.

Movie adaptations come in many shapes and sizes. 9, the upcoming animated film by Shane Acker, began as an 11 minute short at UCLA animation school that earned an Oscar nomination in 2005. With the help of producer Tim Burton, 9 has been stretched out for a feature debut. The mute characters of the original short film now bear the voices of immense talents such as Martin Landau and Jennifer Connelly. We spoke with creator Shane Acker and star Elijah Wood in a conference call to learn more about this mysterious and innovative new project.

Did you ever expect your short to be made into a feature film?

Shane Acker: I intended it to be a director’s reel piece, which is why I spent four and a half years making it, but I never expected a feature. That just came out of a conversation with the initial producer… We considered the back story and where these creatures came from and that lead to a feature.

Were there any difficulties adapting the film from short to feature?

Acker: Well, it was a long process, riddled with new situations I had never been in before. I had never told stories [in] long form, which was a challenge. You didn’t want the film to look like you just stretched out the short. We opened up the possibility of seeing all nine of the characters instead of just the two. As the movie goes, we keep seeing new characters with all these personalities, also exploring the back story of where everything came from. It became a journey of discovery.

What made Elijah want to be a part of the project?

Wood: Simply the short film. It was my initial introduction into the project. I received the short and the script and was so impressed. It was so beautiful and had elements that looked like moving paintings. I’d never seen animation like that before [...] and I think it’s incredibly intriguing because it never gives you a sense of who they are and what has happened, so it leaves you with a lot of questions. I wanted to be a part of the fleshing out of that story.

On what level did you [Elijah] connect with 9?

Elijah Wood: Well, I think he comes into the world kind of innocent and pure, and he kind of comes in without any of the baggage that the other characters have. I identified with his sense of questioning, with his fearlessness and perseverance. I appreciated it about the character. These other characters have been sequestered by fear and it kind of runs their lives, so they stop asking the questions that lead to their salvation.

Shane, what inspired you to show the battle of man versus machine?

Acker: I think in some ways the film is a bit of a cautionary tale and a reaction to the world we live in. We are so overwhelmed with information and technology, and it is easy to get caught up in it all and lose sight of what’s important — real human interaction I think. On some level, I think that’s just a fear that I had.

Both of you worked on the Lord of the Rings. How did your experiences influence you?

Acker: Well, I did a lot of creature animation and I think it was so amazing to be a part of that team. Everyone was so inspired by the project, and I learned a tremendous amount working with world-class animators. It was real learning experience. I don’t think I had a tenth of the experience Elijah had on that project.

Wood: God, well the experience for me was all-encompassing. I don’t know if the experience directly lent itself to working on 9, but I think any experience after Lord of the Rings was inspired just because of the vastness of the work and responsibility towards the character that is fleshed out over the course of three films. All of those elements were so unique and so intense, I think they will continue to inform anything I work on from now on [laughs].

How do you build character relationships when dealing with animation?

Wood: You don’t often get the benefit of working with the full cast, and so much of the fleshing out of the character is from the interaction with the other actors. So animation and voice work is challenging in that respect. You are more often than not in a booth by yourself [...] making that character come to life is hard without a reference to the other actors’ performances. In the initial recordings, sometimes Shane would have to do reference voices for me for the other characters because they hadn’t been recorded yet.

Why do you think that college students in particular would be interested in seeing this film?

Acker: For me it works on many different levels. On face value, you can take it as this exciting escapist fantasy film. But I also think we bring up deeper subjects and deal with them. There is some food for thought that when you leave the theater might inspire some deeper conversations. People who have seen the film twice also see so much more the second time.

Elijah, do you prefer live-action or lending yourself to a film?

Wood: Well, there are distinct differences. When you do voice-overs, you don’t worry about costumes and props and environment. It’s challenging because you have to evoke all of those things with just your voice and no facial expressions or movements. I actually love that challenge. It’s fun for action sequences! When your character is being swung around by a winged beast and you are running, you have to evoke all of these things with imagination.You’re also rewarded and surprised with animation at the end when you see all of your work come to life.

Shane, 7 is a very bold and strong female figure. How did you come about creating her?

Acker: Well, we thought it would be fun if one of the strongest characters was female. It goes back to [Hayao] Miyazaki or James Cameron who both use really strong female characters. It was fun to have someone with such a hard shell in the beginning and then to see throughout the film that there is a real strong heart within her. It takes 9 to chip away at that exterior and make her express herself.

What do you think will mark the next phase in animation? How will technology factor in and how will content change?

Acker: It’s always hard to predict the future, but I can see in the past few years a lot has changed. Waltz with Bashir was really amazing and used animation in an interesting way. I think Persepolis was also a great film. There’s a way in which you can deal with intense subject matter and say things that would be harder to say than in a live-action form. Now that technology is not so expensive, I think it would be great to see people take more into their own hands.

Wood: Yeah, Waltz with Bashir takes a story that is intensely disturbing that would be more disturbing or too difficult to watch in another medium, but the animation style keeps it not at arms length but allows you to experience it in a way that’s more palatable. And something is up with 3-D now too. Everything that comes out seems to be in 3-D, I wonder if that will become more commonplace. Coraline, for example, used 3-D in a way so that it got more intense as the story went along. I still wonder if it will be part of the future animation experience.

Acker: Yeah, Coraline uses it as a part of the story telling rather than as a gimmick. It enhances the movie in a narrative way. Also, I had a chance to see Avatar and I think they really use 3D to bring you into the world. It’s not about poking your eyes out but about being very subtle and controlled. Who knows if that will stick around.