It’s not often that great independent film makes its way to Provo’s theatres. That isn’t the case this weekend, as Dave Boyle’s excellent White on Rice begins its second weekend at Provo Towne Centre. (Rhombus film critic Jordan Petersen recently raved about the film here.) In hopes of boosting support for the film, we have teamed up with Boyle to offer our readership the opportunity to win free tickets to this weekend’s showings. What do you need to do to score these freebies? It’s all outlined below in a guest post from the film’s director, Dave Boyle. Take the time to read his message and get in the drawing for the tickets. We promise you won’t regret supporting this great independent film.
– Steve Pierce, Editor

Have you ever heard the term “high concept?”

It usually means something that can be summarized in just a few succinct words. The term is often bandied about in the movie world, and I believe one famous director once said, “if you can tell me the plot in 25 seconds, then I know it’s going to be a good movie.”

An astronaut lands on a planet ruled by smart apes: high concept. A girl finds out the boy she’s crushing on is a vampire: high concept.

A recently divorced Japanese guy who’s on the cusp of turning forty moves to Utah to live with his sister and share a bunk bed with his ten-year-old nephew while he searches for the love of his life? Not so high concept. And it has some subtitles.

But who cares? I hate high concept. I like things to be complicated, unique and difficult to describe in glib sound bytes. I like subtitles too.

The last plot I described is that of my new movie White on Rice. I shot it here in Utah (I went to BYU and live in Provo), but I would be hesitant to describe it as a “local movie” since that term has become so loaded. It is currently playing in Provo at the Provo Towne Centre and at the Century 16 Cinemas in Salt Lake City.

Now, I’m sure you’re asking yourself: “Why all the discussion about ‘high concept?’” The answer is that high concept films are easy to market to a mass audience. Films like mine require an extra amount of tender loving care to find an appreciative audience. Even if the audience exists, sometimes the movie vanishes from theaters too quickly for them to find it.

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Boy bands are like zombies – if you cut off their heads, they’ll simply grow another one and reform in 10 years, hellbent on world domination. It seems that as soon as one group of musically competent lads resigns their spot atop the global music charts, another has already been carefully groomed and prepared to immediately step into the freshly vacated spotlight.

Not that this is a problem for me. It seems there’s always a need for a group of fresh-faced teen boys to represent a thinly veiled (and entirely wholesome) sexuality in American popular culture. The dangerously high levels of estrogen coursing through the bodies of the country’s 12-year-old girls demand that it be so. In short, these young men live to make their prepubescent devotees scream.

Yet therein lies the dirty little secret — it’s not only the teeny boppers that fall under the spell of these squeaky clean kids in painfully color-coordinated outfits. No one is immune to their catchy hooks and tediously cultivated public personas. They are kryptonite to the image-conscious masses. No matter if you are the 14-year-old boy wearing a spiked dog collar and listening to death metal to mask your deep-seated insecurities or the 45-year-old office worker “getting hip” by tuning into the local Top 40 station on your commute, your feet will tap and your head will bob when exposed to this unique brand of bubble-gum magic, even if only for the briefest of moments. These things will inevitably happen, despite your best efforts to restrain yourself. It may as well be Newton’s previously unrevealed Fourth Law.

I am by no means immune to such indulgences. In fact, I am undoubtedly more shamelessly involved than most. I am, admittedly, a boy band connoisseur. Such an admission will undoubtedly earn me some sideways glances from other chronically insecure heterosexual males – but I’m OK with that. Yes, I know every single word and note to the Backstreet Boys’ classic hit “I Want It That Way,” but so do my closeted brethren. I have nothing to hide.

As long as I’m sitting in the pop culture confession booth, my first CD was Hanson’s “Middle of Nowhere.” I once considered LFO’s “Summer Girls” to represent the epitome of art. I re-watched my battered VHS tape of 5ive’s (yes, that’s how they spelled it) Disney Channel concert at least 100 times between the ages of 12 to 14. And I once convinced the faculty of my small alternative school to cancel classes on a Friday morning so my friends and I could live out our 7th grade boy band dreams by serenading the entire school from the cafeteria stage. Forgive me, father, for I have sinned.

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This isn’t usually what I write about, but stories like these are inspiring and have a tendency to put things into perspective for readers.

Andy Katz, senior writer for ESPN.com, has written a fantastic article about BYU men’s basketball head coach Dave Rose. Months ago, Rose was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and his most recent scan came back cancer-free.

It’s a great story and, if you haven’t had the chance to read it, you can find it here.

Mckay Stevens is a film correspondent for Rhombus. You can follow him on Twitter @s_mckay.

Do you remember the summer your childhood innocence wilted away like so many leaves autumning into fall? So often, it seems, such moments are difficult, if not impossible, to understand as they happen and it is only in retrospect that we can look back with pining nostalgia.

Among all art forms, music is perhaps best suited to convey the beauty of loss and longing, and at their September 26th Muse Music show, Provo band Adding Machines managed to perform what might best be described as an experience of exquisite melancholy; their music was deeply rooted in the nostalgic past and the beauty of its absence, yet still emotionally exuberant.

Adding Machines began their six song set with “I Ain’t Changing,” followed by “Drifting Away.” Both songs (which also open the band’s recent EP Sweet Dreams) are relatively upbeat, but rely on their instrumentation and lead singer Jake Haws’ rough-around-the-edges voice to convey a sense of romance and longing rarely seen in local music (or not-local music for that matter). The beginning of the show revealed a band performing songs about joy and pain, which resulted in an immeasurably more pleasurable listening experience than if the songs had been only “happy” or “sad.”

The band followed their emotionally complex openers with the crowd favorite, “The Showdown.” It was by far the most rock-oriented song of the set and proved the band could entertain visually as well as musically (Haws actually broke his guitar strap on this song swaggering back and forth across the stage). Next came “Eye of the Storm,” which involved all the band members switching instruments and Haws singing, drumming and playing guitar all at once. The song was also my personal favorite due largely to the fact that Melissa Haws, usually on bass and organ, textured the song with long, rich trumpeting. The final two numbers, “New Girl” and “The Final Word,” rounded out the emotional arc of a deliciously nostalgic and beautifully melancholic performance.

Adding Machines’ describes their genre as “folk rock/alt-country,” though that description doesn’t quite do justice to their live show. Indeed, the show demonstrated that the band knows how to take the best from their influences, which subsequently lifts them above the many mediocre bands that similarly describe themselves. More intriguing still are the wider influences the band incorporates. For example, Melissa’s vocals bring a distinct jazz influence and her trumpeting evokes a sultry wailing more often found in Latin genres. As the front-man of the trio, Jake emphasizes the “rock” in “folk rock” through his vocals and stage presence, proving that Adding Machines isn’t just another touchy-feely sob fest. Ultimately, each member of the band (including the versatile Dan Smock) demonstrated facility of their instruments and rare on-stage grace.

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As we continue to strive to bring our readers opinions from all sides and all speakers, we at Rhombus value strong writing (even on seemingly controversial topics) from any and all sources. The following article by McKay Coppins is just that. We trust that our readers appreciate mature discussion of important topics and possess the capacity to think and decide for themselves regarding even the toughest debates of our generation. Please enjoy McKay’s column and don’t be shy about sharing your thoughts in the comment space below. As always, thanks for reading. — Steve Pierce, Editor

Last fall, at the height of the Proposition 8 controversy, I found a rather provocative question anonymously written on a whiteboard in a BYU classroom. The question read:

“After the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 70s, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gave blacks the priesthood. Do you think the church will eventually condone homosexuality as a result of the current civil rights movement?”

I think the question made the students in my lab too uncomfortable to spark any kind of meaningful conversation, and eventually my TA erased the board, dubbing the idea “ridiculous.”

But believe it or not, that wasn’t the last time I heard that thought expressed on BYU campus.

Now, there are several potential points of contention in the phrasing of that original whiteboard question. For example, it implies that the church extended the priesthood to all worthy males simply due to social pressure. It also equates the agenda of the gay community with the black civil rights movement — always a shaky comparison.

But rather than respond to these details, I’d like to use this article to answer the main question at hand: Will the church eventually recant its position on homosexuality and allow “practicing” homosexuals to enjoy all gospel blessings?

Before I tell you my thoughts, I want to say something about which I feel strongly. As someone who has close LDS friends who are dealing with same-sex attraction, I don’t think it does anyone any good to rant about how homosexuality is an abomination. Yes, as a Mormon, I believe that romantic same-sex relationships violate the law of chastity and offend God, but when we dwell on the sinfulness of the offenders, I think we do little more than alienate them.

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