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MTV award’s statue gets a Miami makeover By ELISA TURNER KRT CAMPUS As a trophy to display on the mantle, the MTV Moonman Video Music Award is no buff and golden Oscar. Posed jabbing the MTV flag into lunar rock, this silvery astronaut looks only slightly more buff than, well, the Pillsbury Doughboy mummified in crinkly aluminum foil. But the Moonman’s pudgy profile is about to take a huge hit. The super-sized version — 30 feet tall and 6,500 pounds, to be exact — of the MTV icon, unveiled last Saturday, signifies a ■ major makeover for the Moonman, in honor of the VMA’s first broadcast 'from Miami on Sunday at the AmericanAirlines Arena. Leading a squad of 10 Miami Dade College students in the makeover mission was Miami based artist Robert Chambers. He was commissioned by the music channel to work with local college students to create a unique sculpture — a sort of artistic hyper trophy that has been omnipresent at MTV sponsored pre-Video Music Awards events this week. Lending a hand and creative expertise were several other Miami Dade alums and past students, including artists Ralph Provisero duu miLiidti tuYvidiiu. The Moonman is a commercial endeavor, yes, but still in the general orbit of Chambers’ penchant for art that’s ingeniously composed of flashing, mechanically enhanced contraptions steeped in industrial applications, science experiments and entertainment bravura. “His art really has that non traditional ‘wow’ factor that would be very eye-catching, something that only he could do, and that’s how we approach our channel,” said Tod Apmann, director of grassroots marketing for MTV and MTV2. This is an artist who’s made y sculptures from helicopter parts, hair gel, and radiant LED displays. He has shown his work at South Florida museums, New York galleries and most recently in a solo show at the Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis. Chambers’ art is a hit with kids and adults alike, said Laumeier director Glen Gentele. “Chambers’ work is noisy, it moves, it’s very cool, funky and intellectually stimulating,” said Gentele. While the recent attention showered on the visual arts in South Florida following the success of Art Basel Miami Beach wasn’t a direct factor in MTV’s decision to solicit proposals from several artists here for this project, Apmann said, art was a significant draw. “We were really passionate about involving local artists,” he explained. “I know Miami has a thriving local art scene, and we wanted to take advantage of that, being in a new city for the first time, just to get the excitement out there.” 1 he product ot many au-mgnters in a makeshift studio at the Miami Dade College Wolfson campus, MTV’s newly-minted, super-sized Moonman is sheathed in a glittering column of iridescent silver fiberglass and diamond patterned vinyl, part lunar lightning rod and part hip-hop blasting hot rod. The sculpture’s stocky aluminum frame is plumped up with a vinyl-wrapped Styrofoam helmet, chest and legs, and dozens of special effects. As work progressed on Moonman, Chambers promised “lots of chrome and bling-bling on it. The idea is to turn this into a Miami-styled low-rider piece.” Chambers consulted on the project with Mr. Neon, the manufacturer that outfitted low-riders in neon for both “Fast and Furious” movies and did neon sets for “Miami Vice.” The entire work is all pumped up with swaggering adornments courtesy of Miami’s car culture: winking Escalade tail lights, racing stripes in pulsing purple and green neon, a mega-watt speaker system, heaving hydraulic body parts and other flashy accouterments that normally deck out bass-pounding fleets of low-rider cars cruising late nights along Calle Ocho and in Coconut Grove and Hialeah. That’s not all. A hyper-party trophy if ever there was one, Moonman can spew a minor meteor shower of custom-made confetti. While limbering up its hydraulic-powered biceps and pectorals, it is programmed to unleash hundreds of tiny silver Mylar Moonman Mini Me’s as it rolls about the city this week during prerVMA festivities. To accomplish all this, the Miami Dade College students spent long hours in a sometimes stifling workplace that was buffeted by gusting wind and rain one early morning around 1 a.m. just as Hurricane Charley barreled towards Florida. Blocks of Styrofoam tumbled in the air. “It looked like a scene out of ‘Fantasia,’” Chambers said. The students “just keep banging away,” he said. From late afternoon to well past midnight, jigsaw blades whirred, hammers pounded, and discussions ensued about circuit breakers and the correct geometrical calculations needed to carve the Moonman’s spherical liplmpf from mplnn-chanprl wprlpps of Styrofoam. After the Moonman’s aluminum frame arrived at the MDC Student Life Plaza on Northeast First Avenue on Aug. 6, its heft multiplied daily, if not hourly, as the piece began to look less like a demented chop shop denizen and more like a bizarro astronaut stretched out on his back, enduring marathon plastic surgery. Some evenings, Chambers showed up with take-out Polio Tropical for the crew. On another night he explained how coils o'f yellow cables and black levers would function like joy-sticks, allowing owners of low-rider cars to make their vehicles lurch and hop, and the car doors open and shut in sync with the snapping motion of glitter-painted hoods. The same sort of levers would put the VMA Moonman through its strutting, gawk-at-me paces. All of this could not have been further from the red carpet lavishness of the actual VMA, and yet the college kids kept coming back for more. “I could care less about the VMAs. I wanted to work with someone like Robert who could teach me things,” said Adrian The Moonman, the MTV Video Music Award’s icon was re-vamped by Miami-based artist Robert Chambers and Miami-Dade college students for the upcoming ceremony. Molina, 21, a fine arts major. “He’s super-inspiring and really open to ideas.” The ambitious size of the project also impressed George Oliphant, a VJ for mtvlj who spent one day with MTV segment producer Dan Luts filming the students at work. Oliphant has seen plenty of startling projects on campuses, including fashion designs made of moss and peacock feathers at Rhode Island School of Design. Still, he said, “I’ve never seen anything of this magnitude.” Climbing down from the belly of the Moonman last week, art student Patricia Hernandez, 21, exuded seize-the-day enthusiasm. She was one of the few on the student crew who had actually ridden in a low-rider recently, and loved helping construct the Moonman’s hybrid style of “ghetto fab and cheesiness.” She said: “I’ve learned more here than in any art class, between woodworking, hydraulics and cutting foam. ... It’s been amazing.” Summer blockbusters make comeback with record sales By TERRY LAWSON KRT CAMPUS So did you know that three of the 10 top-grossing movies of all time were released this year? That yet another was released late last year and made the bulk of its fortune in 2004? That 11 of the Top 20 have been released in the past five years? Don’t feel so bad — it’s not common knowledge. But the summer of 2004 is headed toward being the biggest moneymaker in history. By Labor Day, analysts say, the domestic box office should surpass $4 billion, which tops the previous record-holding summer of 2002. The biggest movie that summer was “Spider-Man”; the biggest release this summer has been “Spider-Man 2,” which has earned more than $360 million and, last week, remained in the Top 10 after eight weeks in theaters. (“Shrek 2,” which opened in the middle of May, has earned more than $435 million, making it third biggest of all time.) No rewer than eight movies released this summer — plus three others released in early or mid-May — have passed the magic $ 100 million mark, which remains the blockbuster bell to ring, even in an age in which movies like “Spider Man 2” cost $250 million to produce and market. Ancillary sales of DVDs — a market that continues to have runaway growth — often double a film’s earning power. Many movies, especially comedies and thrillers, now earn more from DVD sales and rentals than they do in theaters. There is no end to theories as to why the motion picture industry has enjoyed such a dramatic comeback in the past 20 years. And although it is true that fewer North Americans attend movies than they did in the ’50s, When average admission was less than $2, it is also true that until nearly every U.S. home had a television (something that didn’t occur until the ’60s), movies had been America’s primary entertainment outlet for two decades. Today, movies compete for attention and dollars not only with network television but also with cable, more sports franchises, the home video market, personal computers and video games. Yes, there are more movie screens than ever, and movies are marketed more aggressively — and more innovatively, considering the church group groundswell that has made Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” the eighth-biggest of all time with $370 million. But there is also a growing feeling that there is a more central reason for the movie boom: “1 think we’re making movies people want to see,” says Sam Raimi. Before Raimi was tapped to direct “Spider-Man” and its sequel, his most successful film at the box office had been the baseball drama “For Love of the Game,” which took in $35 million during its run. With an estimated budget of $50 million, it was considered a failure. “There’s a lot wider variety of movies out there, more to choose from, and while the studios still decide what gets made, the filmmakers have more power than they used to. If I want to make a big expensive summer movie like ‘Spider-Man,’ I have to make it at a studio in a certain way. But if I want to go back and make a smaller movie like ‘The Gift,’ I have the opportunity to do that, as long as I can do it for a price.” “The Gift,” a supernatural drama from 2000, had a budget of $10 million, most of which went to pay a cast that included Cate Blanchett and Keanu Reeves. These stars, along with many others, routinely mix big-budget studio movies with smaller, more personal projects. The last eight months — stretching back to December’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (seventh of all time) — prove Raimi’s point. Wide-appeal, big-budget movies like his own, “Shrek 2” and “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” have earned the lion’s share of the box office this summer. The studios accurately call these franchises “tentpoles” because they can be counted on to prop up earnings even if other films fail to connect. Between them, their take this season has been staggering, more than $1 billion. But savvy marketing techniques have made high-profile successes of films without built-in audiences or major stars, including “The Bourne Supremacy,” a sequel to a spy thriller that found a larger audience on DVD than it did in theaters. Perhaps most impressively, “Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story,” which even its fans call a stupid comedy, has made more than $112 million for 20th Century Fox and could easily double that with its DVD release. Marketing also played no small part in the summer’s most amazing success story, “Fahrenheit 9/11.” The Bush-baiting screed from Michael Moore rode controversy to the* tune of $116 million, dwarfing the box-office gross of any documentary ever. Documentaries have never been more popular with audiences than now. “Super Size Me,” a comic expose addressing the unhealthy effect fast food in general (and McDonald’s in particular) has on the public, was produced for about $300,000, and at least three times that was spent on its marketing. It has made $11 million. Of the current Top 100 films, 19 are docs. According to the trade journal Variety, that’s the highest number in history. There have been some impressive flops. “Thunderbirds,” with a production budget of $57 million, has earned less than $7 million. “King Arthur,” which cost $120 million to mount, has taken in only $51 million. The $110-million remake of “Around the World in 80 Days” never got off the ground, making less than $24 million. “Catwoman” had no claws, earning back only $38 million for a studio that spent $100 million making it and another $35 million trying to sell it. All of the above generally received lukewarm to negative reviews, but it was the buzz — the word of mouth — that did them in. Fox recently became the first studio of the summer to decline to prescreen one of its movies, “Alien vs. Predator,” for critics in time for Friday newspaper reviews. (Warner Brothers followed suit, withholding “Exorcist: The Beginning” in the same fashion.) Fox’s maneuver paid off. “Alien Vs. Predator” was the week’s top film, raking in $38 million. It was, Fox gloated, its sixth consecutive film to make more than $20 million in its opening weekend, a string that began April 23 with the Denzel Washington thriller “Man on Fire.” No less an authority than Tom Cruise told the Detroit Free Press recently, the movie business and the public are obviously in sync. “We’re making a lot of good movies, and there’s lot of people who want to see them. We’re all getting smarter. Simple as that.” I BitTorrent allows movie fans easier downloading By Doug Bedell KRT CAMPUS Earlier this year, as filmmaker Michael Moore was putting the final touches on “Fahrenheit 9/11,” he unwittingly thrust himself into the debate over Internet file-trading ethics and the relatively unknown, free program BitTorrent. In an interview, Moore compared file-sharing of copyright movies to friends lending one another purchased DVDs. “I don’t agree with copyright laws,” he said, “and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it... as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labor.” That was all his political enemies at MooreWatch.com needed to hear. In hopes of denting Moore’s box office profits, the Web site’s manager decided to help people download free copies. But rather than simply posting one huge pirated version of the movie for everyone to fight over, MooreWatch.corn’s backers used the power of BitTorrent to distribute tens of thousands of “Fahrenheits” in a faster, more efficient manner. All they had to do was link to a tiny torrent file. BitTorrent is like the old Napster with one major twist. Napster and its peer-to-peer, or P2P, • cousins connect users directly with each other to receive entire files. That makes downloading full length, digitized movies a long, arduous task for both the downloader and the person offering the file, especially when a lot of people are trying to get the same copy simultaneously. BitTorrent breaks up large files into pieces, then allows users to “swarm” — exchanging small portions of files with one another — until everyone has a complete set. Download speeds depend on two factors. First, like the computer bulletin board systems of the 1980s, the software keeps track of how much you contribute to hosting files for the group. The more you share, the faster your downloads. Second, the more people trading a file, the more options for obtaining its pieces. So, unlike the old Napster, popularity doesn’t bog down the process — it gives it a shot of adrenaline. But it’s not instantaneous. A “Sopranos” episode may take six hours or more to download, depending on network traffic. A crude “screener” copy of “Fahrenheit 9/11” last week required 36 hours on a moderately fast DSL connection. BitTorrent was developed by Washington programmer Bram Cohen, 29, and presented to the world at hacker conventions more than three years ago. --1 Hang up your hat. And put up feet At Larry Marshall Hair Salon you will feel right at home. Literally. Our 2 storey house on Millwood has 4 private service rooms so that your visit is quiet and relaxed. With 24 years experience in hair styling & coloring you are assured a rewarding experienced And when you leave ..you will probably forget the hat Is roa l 3214 Millwood Ave H>'" GOLDWELLB ] . - Professional Hair Care Prdoucts