Derrick Rossignol

Editor in Chief

In the days when music is hyper-produced and the loudness war rages on, a record mastered to preserve a wide dynamic range is a breath of fresh air.

Thankfully, there is still a market for bands who record in their garages or produce their own music, although their job may be imperfect. The material rarely suffers with a slightly-below par production job. In fact, it almost helps: With a pair of high quality headphones, hearing mixing and mastering imperfections can make material infinitely more interesting. It takes you out of the lull that having everything fall exactly in place can put you into. It adds an element of surprise: if you know exactly where a song is going, what’s the point?

In the first track of “Warpaint,” the titular group’s sophomore album, they begin with a warbling, buzzing guitar and a punchy drum beat before the beat stops and one of the band members is heard saying, “Ah, sorry! I’m gonna stand up.” Then they just soldier on and keep it going, like this take was recorded at a rehearsal.

What Warpaint plays could be considered dream pop to a degree, which is a strange juxtaposition of a genre: although the sound is ethereal, reverb-drenched and atmospheric, that vibe is often achieved through lo-fi means. A lot of dream pop is made by aspiring musicians in their bedrooms with equipment a grade or two above the built-in microphone on their laptops. Dream pop is not about what you have: it’s how you use it.

The other major element of their style, post-punk, shares a similar philosophy. In its early days, post-punk was often performed by unskilled musicians who knew a bit about chords and a lot about what they wanted to say and what sound they wanted to make. That’s not at all to say that Warpaint fits into that demographic, but their dark, dense sound makes sense based on its stylistic origins.

The problem with post-punk dream pop is that there is a bit of a contradiction there: dream pop is ambient and airy while post-punk is fast and energetic. When you combine the two, you run the risk of combining the lower BPM’s of dream pop with the more basic instrumentation of post-punk. That can work for a few songs, but unless it’s done well, things can start to drag quickly.

Unfortunately, it seems that Warpaint may have fallen into that trap.

It would have been a service to cut a few songs from this album: in its current state, 51 minutes is too long to hold attention. There are many great moments where the group’s creativity shines through, but they’re spread just a little too far apart. Had this been a 30-40 minute record instead, the downtime between these moments would have been less of a sedative and more of a segue.

And that’s a real shame, because the highlights are beyond worthwhile: “Feeling Right” is like Beach House’s grimier little sister while the synth in “Biggy” is Nine Inch Nails redux. It’s moments like these, and there are more than a few, that help the album stick around, prompting repeat listens in hopes that the extended vanilla sections begin to seem less like valleys and more like cracks in the pavement, or that their self-contained value becomes more evident. If any album has the potential to be a grower, this is it.

Grade: B-

Practical application of skills is a prerequisite for a decent career in almost any job field. This is surely, in part, why many university degree programs require the completion of some form of internship or practicum as a graduation requirement. Nursing and journalism are just a few examples.

Any good university, then, to some extent, ought to assist students in their endeavor to find opportunities where they can gain practical skills.

The Child Study Center, a part of the University of Maine’s psychology department, presents an excellent opportunity for aspiring psychology majors to demonstrate their abilities to interact and work with potential clients, an obviously beneficial skill during a job hunt.

In 2011, former UMaine president Robert Kennedy created a program that was designed to cut $12.5 million between 2011 and 2014, putting several majors and programs in danger of complete elimination. Among these is the Child Study Center.

The economic malaise makes budgeting understandably difficult, especially given how many obligations a state university has. But prioritization, which assuredly has to occur, should weigh educational opportunities higher than certain other university functions.

After all, university classes that are required to graduate from a program are not free. Departments ought to facilitate those students who pay for the privilege of being educated.

Research grants and publicity are important to the more bureaucratic side of university function, obviously. After all, any educational entity also must function as a business on some level to ensure its continued existence. And research grants bring money and notoriety into a school, as does publicity, through the channel of bringing in more tuition dollars.

But, those tuition dollars ought to be reinvested in the education that many students work very hard, economically and intellectually, to better themselves with.

Really, isn’t the best sort of publicity the phenomenal success of a degree-program graduate? When alumni go on to achieve great prowess in their chosen field, they also bring acclaim back to the university they attended. It is logical to assume that, to some extent, the quality of education that person received contributed to their success.

This is why it’s important for universities to provide opportunities where students get to practically apply the theory they’ve learned in their coursework. Companies are less likely to hire individuals who can’t prove that they are actually capable of completing tasks that fall within the purview of their degree. And this reflects negatively on a university.

By cutting money to programs that help students develop their practical skills, like the Child Study Center, UMaine puts themselves at risk of having a bevy of alumni who graduate without fully demonstrating their abilities. This is a disservice not only to the academic standing of the school, but to all those who pay for the privilege of attending.

The Blue Sky Project is important, certainly. A university campus in a state of decay doesn’t help promote it. And unique and original research is important to bolster academic standing as well. But the question has to be asked — are new entrance signs and grant proposals really as effective a use of money as practical programs like the Child Study Center?

Katherine Revello

Opinion Editor

The recent emergence of the Tea Party brought populism screaming back onto the stage of national politics. Now, while dishonest brokers in and out of elected office refuse to acknowledge even the possibility that their followers have a legitimate viewpoint, conservatives are turning their methods, much like their beliefs, back to the Founding.

Comprised of state delegations, conventions are a hugely important aspect of American political architecture. They are the cornerstones upon which every significant governing document — the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the Declaration and even the Articles of Confederation — has been built.

The principle is simple — states choose individuals who are authorized to argue and vote on behalf of their interests. If enough states approve a measure, it becomes a Constitutional amendment.

Senators were once elected by state-appointment, giving this same sort of state power a dominant presence. But the passage of the 17th Amendment, which opened senatorial races to the popular vote, destroyed this balance of power and has led to a concentration of power amongst various federal institutions, many of them not answerable to the people. It’s surely no coincidence that this deviancy has accompanied a long period of legislation that has ballooned national spending and deficits, expanded the federal regulatory leviathan and generally failed to resolve any significant political issue.

Take, for instance, the recent zenith in the federal budget nightmare, which, over the holiday season, culminated in Congress quietly passing a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill. The United States is already $17 trillion in debt and spending is unsustainable, as every quasi-rational economist in the world acknowledges. A bevy of polls continues to show that the American people rank the economy as among the most important national issues. Yet, the best solution members of Congress can agree on is, well, nothing of significant change. Federal programs that are bloated, corrupt and unnecessary continue to be funded despite general consensus that there is a spending problem.

The 535 members of Congress, who are supposedly highly qualified on policy issues, cannot find a satisfactory resolution. Why, then, not allow a state-run convention the opportunity to come up with a solution? Perversions of the power balance aside, the onus of functional governing capacity rests with the states, and for good reason. Yes, the federal government is large; it does represent an entire nation. But, in practice, its duties are more managerial than practical.

State governments have to actually function at nearly the same level as private enterprise. They deal with more issues that affect the day-to-day lives of their residents and, when they run awry, have a much greater affect on those same residents.

The majority of federal agencies are overseers. They look out for non-compliance with federal law, which, really, is meant to be limited purely to the powers granted to it by the Constitution. All other functions are in the purview of the states.

And that’s why states are meant to have a role in national politics. Those interests that the federal government, simply because of its breadth, cannot account for when taking action, are supposed to be injected by the states into the national discussion. But, the passage of the 17th Amendment muzzled this incredibly powerful voice. And the national infrastructure has deteriorated dangerously since then. Therefore, its time to strip the edifice down to its bare boards and build anew. Conventions remain the best and soundest method through which to do this.

Romany Melek

For the Maine Campus

As happens with any new official, people wait a couple of months before they start questioning and criticizing the performance of that new official. These months were the only that Mohamed Morsi enjoyed in office. After that, the situation started to get worse.

The “Economist” in August of 2013 said: “There is no doubt that Muhammad Morsi’s performance as president was a disaster. He won about a quarter of the eligible vote and proceeded to flout every sort of democratic norm.”

The straw that broke the camel’s back was an event organized by the Egyptian presidency supposedly to support the Syrian people. Morsi invited his fans and a number of Islamic figures; most of them are “retired terrorists.”

The event was supposed to support and discuss the Syrian cause. However, most of the talk — in the presence of the president — was about the opposition and they, the Islamists, described the anti-Morsi protesters as “non-believers and hypocrites who deserve death.”

The continuous playing of this clip during prime time was a gift to Egyptian news channels.

After this event, people felt that the president they elected was using terrorists to threaten them and make them back off and stop protesting against him.

All these political catastrophes were more than enough to change the compass of Egyptian politics and push people to lose faith in the Islamic trend that has always preached the name of God in all times.

That year under Islamic leadership even made many people in Egypt lose faith in Islam itself. This conclusion was drawn from many phone calls from laymen to talk shows saying that they stopped believing in Islam. More importantly, numbers of atheists have increased significantly.

The U.S. was not prepared for this change and, as a result, the White House decided to use its media, especially CNN, to support Morsi and provide some balance after they noticed that the Egyptian media turned against him at the end.

The U.S. allied with the Islamists in Egypt when they seemed to be the winning card. So, the White House believed that any financial support for the Islamists would be a kind of investment. Every penny Uncle Sam pays for the Islamic government will be paid back with generous and invaluable favors for the U.S. in the Middle East.

The winds, however, blew where the ship didn’t wish to go, and the Islamists were forced to step down before Uncle Sam received the expected payback.

As a consequence, we’ve seen conflict and contradiction and sometimes discrepancies between the U.S. media and the Egyptian media over the past six months.

As I said in part one of this serial, the Egyptian media see opposing Islam as the ultimate reason for their existence, so they make very big issues out of any minor mistake the Islamists make, and much bigger issues if the mistakes are really consequential. On the other hand, the U.S. media, as a weapon in the hands of the American policy makers, saw the Islamist president as a servant for their interests in the Middle East and supported him as much as they could.

I previously discussed how the Egyptian army allied with the private media to be able to get rid of their mutual enemy, the Islamists. But now another alliance — Qatar — also saw Islamists as a strategic ally in the Middle East, as the U.S. did. Qatari Al-Jazeera, therefore, and the U.S. CNN have come to be on the same page — a Qatari-U.S. ally in their foreign policy regarding Egypt.

Brett Salter

For the Maine Campus

I spent the better half of my weekend driving through the snow in my 1998 Dodge Intrepid. With 200,000 miles and barely any tread left on its wide tires, I could scarcely believe it would be up to the challenge. But, though the automatic gearbox struggled to adapt to speed changes, and the brakes lost composure a couple times, the Intrepid was indeed intrepid. And I realized a few things: First, there are more factors about a car than its crafting that determines its ability to drive.

On this same trip, I observed a Honda CR-V backwards on the side of the highway. Why should a four wheel drive vehicle be worse off on a snowy drive than my low slung, front-wheel-drive-only car? Simple; the driver determines the success of the journey. If you drive a four-wheel drive car thinking it will keep you safe, you will have a crash. The false confidence that off-road cars give operators can lead them into driving too fast or into not paying attention. Remember that treacherous roads can thwart even the best of cars, and always be prepared to lose grip on the road. Four-wheel drive helps your car move, but it certainly does not lend its assistance in stopping. You will notice the difference when you careen off of the side of the road.

Secondly, by the time a car has reached 15 years old, the quality of the car at the outset begins to have less bearing on the current quality. For instance, in 1998, this particular car, brand new, would be fat, ugly, and slow. But now that it has weathered a decade and a half, it might as well be a 1998 Nissan Maxima. A Nissan at that time would find a Dodge wanting, but now it would be difficult to find a difference between the two. In fact, the worse car could now seem better for any number of reasons. For instance, if the Nissan had owners who constantly drove the car at six thousand revolutions per minute and failed to perform regular oil changes, they might find that they have lost a few dozen horsepower over the years. If Aesop made a fable about this very situation, it would be an elder tortoise racing an elder hare. The hare would have consumed too much scotch over its lifetime and found itself in too many fights, and the tortoise would have lived its life only drinking an occasional glass of wine and going on a few healthy jogs.

The moral? Maintenance is important. When you buy a car that already has 180,000 miles on it, do not take for granted the fact that it still runs well. Many of the cars on a college campus are this way. If you want the car to last the rest of your college career and into the two hundred thousand mile club, take care of it. Check your tire pressure and oil regularly; stop driving the car until it is close to empty, thereby dragging the sludge at the bottom of the gas tank into the engine. If you treat your uninspiring Chrysler with care, it will surprise you by lasting until your children are old enough to drive.

Seth Dorman

For The Maine Campus

Wednesday is the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the United States. About 57 million fetuses have been aborted in the U.S. since then.

Looking back at history, we often struggle to understand how people can be blind — or just silent — to the evils around them. We don’t understand how the idea that racism and slavery are normal and unproblematic could be popularly held, or how Germans under Hitler could fail to notice the persecution of millions of Jews. But we are so much a product of our own time that it is nearly impossible to step back from ourselves and identify what we are doing wrong, and even if we do, we are usually too scared to say or do anything. This is not merely a passive mistake. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor during World War II who was executed for his participation in a plot to assassinate Hitler: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

This is not a sideline issue: If these are human beings being aborted, then since 1973, as a nation, we are guilty of 57 million murders. That is what is at stake if you think abortion is right and you are actually wrong. To apathetically write this off is to choose to ignore a practice with more than nine times the death toll of the Holocaust.

In light of this, is abortion actually murder? If life begins at conception, the unavoidable answer is yes. The National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children (NAAPC) cites a number of professors and scientists on this issue:

Professor Hymie Gordon, Mayo Clinic: “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”

Professor Micheline Mathews-Roth, Harvard University Medical School: “It is incorrect to say that biological data cannot be decisive. […] It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception. […] Our laws, one function of which is to help preserve the lives of our people, should be based on accurate scientific data.”

Dr. Watson A. Bowes, University of Colorado Medical School said: “The beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter — the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals.”

On their website, NAAPC details the accounts of other doctors who have come to the conclusion that, biologically speaking, life begins at conception: “Dr. Bernard Nathanson, internationally known obstetrician and gynecologist, was a cofounder of what is now the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL). He owned and operated what was at the time the largest abortion clinic in the Western Hemisphere. He was directly involved in over 60,000 abortions. Dr. Nathanson’s study of developments in the science of fetology and his use of ultrasound to observe the unborn child in the womb led him to the conclusion that he had made a horrible mistake. Resigning from his lucrative position, Nathanson wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that he was deeply troubled by his ‘increasing certainty that I had in fact presided over 60,000 deaths.’”

Scientific evidence confirms that life begins at conception. In the case of human conception, this means human life has begun. Therefore, to abort at any point is to take a human life. There are complications to the argument, such as those regarding rape, or the health of the mother; but however we reason through these issues, we cannot disregard that abortion is the killing of a defenseless human being. This must be the primary and ultimate consideration, for it is the most dangerous one to ignore.

The housing crisis in 2008, along with the global economic recession that followed, haven’t been kind to state universities. Decreased enrollment nationwide has forced universities to reconsider some of their academic programs. The University of Maine system has been similarly affected, with the Orono campus in particular featuring some of the largest changes.

Former UMaine President Robert Kennedy created a working group in 2011 with the aim of cutting enough programs to save roughly $12.5 million between 2011 and 2014. As a result, 16 majors have faced elimination. Most of these have come from within the college of liberal arts. The latest of these programs to face elimination is the Child Study Center, which is a part of the Psychology Department on campus.

Kevin Duplissie has been Director and Head Teacher of the Child Study Center since 2003. Duplissie has taught psychology at UMaine for 27 years and is devoted to making sure that the Child Study Center will stay a part of the university.

“The University, as in any entity nowadays, has to look at what money is available and how to spend that money,” Duplissie said. “I’m concerned that the university may think that we are solely a preschool. We’re not. We’re an academic center. My goals within the next few months is to explain that to the university.”

Located on Sebago Road near the Maine Bound Adventure Center, the Child Study Center is a preschool that offers a curriculum of activities to children with a focus on early childhood development. The school consists of a classroom area with a patio and backyard where the kids can interact and participate in activities based on developing each child’s skills in reading, writing and mathematics. However, this requires a tuition payment from parents, which is a major deterrent considering the number of free preschools available.

Aside from the benefits that the children receive from this specialized education, UMaine students from a number of different majors also receive the benefit of witnessing and being a part of educating the children. Although Duplissie is in charge of the curriculum, the actual teaching activities are conducted by students. It is this firsthand experience that allows students to develop skills they would not otherwise learn in a classroom.

“I have up to 44 preschool children that come through [the Child Study Center] per week to get an actual preschool experience,” Duplissie said. “My college students get a chance to see how children develop and the stages they go through.

“It would be like going through and taking an automotive class without actually fixing a vehicle. Looking at a book doesn’t tell you what you need; you need to get your hands dirty and fix a vehicle,” Duplissie said.

In 2010, the university decided that the amount of money allocated to the Child Study Center would be decreased over a five year period with the hopes that the Child Study Center could become a self-sustaining business. Now in its 75th year of operation, the Child Study Center has been struggling to stay afloat.

“The parent association along with the staff has raised $90,000 to help supplement [the Child Study Center] but it’s very difficult with today’s economy,” Duplissie said. “Our tuition for the children has diminished but our involvement with students has almost doubled. We need to increase and maintain an enrollment of 22 children per day. I’m writing grants to do workshops for parents and teachers all over the state to make sure this program is going to be here for another 75 years.

“In all honesty, I’m very aware of the budget,” Duplissie said. “Because of my commitment to the program, I’ll offer to take a salary cut to help save the funds and resources to the program.”

Ronnie Lapierre is a fourth-year student studying psychology with a concentration in developmental psychology. She has worked under Duplissie as part of the work study program for a year and believes that working at the Child Study Center has given her an advantage going into the job market in her career field.

“I just got offered a position as a behavioral help professional,” Lapierre said. “Without any of the knowledge and experience I’ve gained here I probably wouldn’t have gotten it.”

Although most of the students involved in the program come from the fields of education and psychology, there are students from very different majors go to the school to learn how to teach children about their subjects. In October of 2013, Marine science students taught the kids about safety at the beach as well as aquatic life.

“These students are learning about marine science but they wanted to be able to teach that to others, and they needed an avenue to practice these skills,” Duplissie said.

Within the next few months, Duplissie will make his case to the university and hopes that he will be able to persuade them that the Child Study Center is a program worth funding.

Danielle Walczak

Staff Writer

Christopher Tin has worked for both Apple and Microsoft throughout his time as a commercial composer — a contrast indicative of Tin’s wide variety of musical talents which have lead him to compose anything from symphonies to music for Verizon commercials.

Music director and conductor of the Bangor Symphony Orchestra Lucas Richman interviewed Tin in Minsky Recital Hall on Friday afternoon for a group of young composers and enthusiasts of Tin’s music. Tin’s appearance is part of his residency with the Bangor Symphony Orchestra. The Bangor Symphony Orchestra will debut Tin’s newest composition: Journeys with vocal quartet Anonymous 4 on Sunday at the Collins Center for the Arts.

Tin, who studied at Stanford University and the Royal College of Music in London, has made music for the movie “X-Men 2” and the popular video game “Civilizations 4.” His song “Baba Yetu” from the introduction of “Civilizations” jump-started his debut album, “Calling All Dawns.” The album later won two Grammy Awards.

“The decision to make a CD was largely based on this idea that I needed an artistic project that was solely my own,” Tin said.

Baba Yetu was a big hit in the gamer world. His song, which features the African choir, Soweto Gospel Choir, now plays at the Fountains of Dubai. This connection happened largely because the president of the company who created the fountains, Wet Design, loves “Civilizations.”

“You never know who’s a gamer out there,” Tin said with a laugh.

For Tin making connections in the industry and having a variety of different musical talents has lead him to success.

Tin’s college roommate at Stanford worked on “Civilizations” and hired him to compose the song for the game. Yet after his success in the game he didn’t want his album to be just African music.

“Let’s not be that African music guy, let’s not get pigeonholed because the music industry loves to do that. I thought let’s be the world music guy,” said Tin, who then created “Calling All Dawns,” which emulates the cycle from dawn to night.

Each track on the album is written in a different language, which brought Tin from places like Johannesburg, South Africa to Turkey.

“All my life I’ve always been involved in a lot of different types of music,” said Tin.

For Tin it is important to incorporate realistic cultural influences in his music. Tin’s Journeys, premiering on Sunday, focuses on the ancient Greek language. Using the vocal quartet Anonymous 4 he emulates the Sirens call from “The Odyssey.” The actual text from Homer’s Epic poem is used in his vocals.

Tin hopes to release his sophomore album in April and also is working on another video game song, which is top secret.

I feel fortunate in that I’ve had to meet a lot of different creative demands over the years, all of which have fed into my style of composing,” said Tin in an interview with the Maine Campus before his talk. “When working on games, films, and commercials, one day I might be writing a bossa nova, the next I might be writing a jazz arrangement. I like to think that I survey the tools of a lot of different genres and mediums, adopt those techniques, which I think can help me, and grow my style based on all these influences.”

Josh Deakin

For the Maine Campus

Every so often, a film comes along that speaks volumes for a particular generation. The 1995 film “Glory Daze” is one of these films.

The movie reeks of attitudes and fashions that were popular in the 1990s. It features the talents of then-up-and-coming actors like Ben Affleck, French Stewart and Alyssa Milano.

There is also some cameos of notoriety like Matt Damon, who plays an ex-roommate at a party; Matthew McConaughey, who plays a drunken U-Haul salesman who gives a speech that is oddly reminiscent of his character in “Dazed and Confused”; and Brendan Fraser, who plays the boyfriend of a bickering couple on a bus.

The film centers around five friends who are graduating from college at University of California, Santa Cruz. The act of graduating has them all coming to the realization that they will eventually have to move on, but maybe not as soon as they think. Jack, played by Affleck, comes up with the idea that the friends stay in Santa Cruz and remain living in their shared house, dubbed “El Rancho,” for another year.

All of the roommates begin to find reasons to stay in Santa Cruz for another year. Jack’s idea of living in his “glory days” longer begins to look a lot more realistic. However, slowly but surely, plans fall apart for each of them.

It is a great entry into the “slacker film” genre that made “Clerks” and “The Big Lebowski” huge. Affleck is true to form after starring in other slacker films “Dazed and Confused” and “Mallrats.” Not only does he star in the film, but he also narrates portions of it.

Jack is a deeply troubled art student who is coming off of a seemingly bad break up. Just like ‘90s teen angst dictates, his parents do not understand him and feel like he is wasting his life. Where Affleck particularly shines in the film is at a beach party where he confronts his ex and delivers a speech that will haunt the tone of the rest of the movie. One line in particular — “Is there a third option between burning out and fading away?” — is a question that probably a lot of graduates ask themselves. Affleck would not begin to make a name for himself outside of slacker films until 1997s “Good Will Hunting.”

What truly makes “Glory Daze” a wonderful film is the influence from the decade it was made in. The film’s music is strictly skater punk bands like NOFX and Sublime. There is a skateboarding scene that almost feels as though it was added just to have skateboarding in the movie. The characters dress in typical ‘90s fashion. There are backwards hats, sweatshirts tied around waists, and shorts that go below the knee. It is a perfect snapshot for the time period. Due to limited releases, the film is not well known, but the film is definitely worth a watch.

Kyle Hadyniak

For The Maine Campus

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is the result of a seamless cinematic trifecta. An outstanding lead actor, a confident and experienced director, and a meaty, exhaustingly-well-written screenplay combine to create a movie that is quite simply peerless.

Based on the true story of Wall Street banker Jordan Belfort’s corrupted rise and fall in the late 1980s, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is unabashed in its extreme take on the tainted super-rich atmosphere. Leonardo DiCaprio achieves a career-defining performance as Belfort, the ex-Wall Street salesman who lives a luxurious, drug and sex-ridden lifestyle leading his own illegal investment firm. Throughout the three-hour movie, we see Belfort transform from an enthusiastic, innocent Wall Street investor to an animalistic money-crazed junkie, and watching this transformation is nothing short of brilliant.

To call Terence Winter’s script “fantastic” is undercutting it. Belfort’s introductory fourth-wall monologue sets the film’s darkly-comedic tone and highlights the thrilling, senseless lifestyle that accompanies corrupted wealth. Sharp writing and skillful editing makes the lengthy running time less dull, and Martin Scorsese’s signature directorial touches provide an eccentric telling of Belfort’s career. The screenplay effectively illustrates Belfort’s arduous lifestyle of drugs, sex and money. Scorsese and DiCaprio pull no punches here; nudity, drug use and language are in full-force, completely earning the movie’s R rating.

DiCaprio’s performance is a sheer spectacle. On the media circuit, he has said “The Wolf of Wall Street” drained him, professionally, and the sheer dynamism DiCaprio dedicates to Belford makes this claim evident. Belfort’s exhausting drug use, sex-crazed parties, and rabid behavior are effortlessly portrayed by DiCaprio. The fact that DiCaprio is equally convincing as the innocent Wall Street broker seen in the film’s beginning as he is as the clever, over-sexed, drug-addicted playboy at the film’s end is a testament to his skill. DiCaprio solidifies his acting virtuosity in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” shamelessly jumping into the roller-coaster ride that is Belfort’s life.

The supporting cast is excellent as well. Jonah Hill offers a surprisingly varied performance as Belfort’s friend and business partner, Donnie Azoff. Hill brings his comedy chops to “The Wolf of Wall Street,” but it is his drug-crazed moments and tender exchanges that are expertly portrayed. Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, and Rob Reiner round out the cast, each offering their own unique and powerful character moments. It is when the cast comes together, like during Belfort’s crazy office parties or his animalistic drug-induced gatherings, that the movie is at its best.

Harkening back to the explicit screenplay, the film’s mature content really sells Belfort’s wild way of life, giving DiCaprio a catalyst for his diverse and remarkable performance. Explicit sex acts populate many scenes, while drug use is ubiquitous. Moreover, swearing is as common as regular speak, offering more than just the occasional comedic one-liner or punchy exchange. However, none of this is unwelcomed or brazenly over-abundant. The mature content fits perfectly with the Wall Street lifestyle, selling the movie’s atmosphere is a remarkably effective way.

“The Wolf of Wall Street” is simply a masterful movie. Those who are worried about the bloated running time can be assured the movie will hold your interest, not a difficult feat considering DiCaprio’s endlessly-energetic performance and the story’s mature nature. When the credits roll, one can’t help but feel exhausted by the irrational, obscene lifestyle produced by the corrupted super-rich.

A fascinating insight into American greed and exploitation, “The Wolf of Wall Street” demonstrates human vice at its worse. Not many movies are apt on sending that kind of message, making “The Wolf of Wall Street” an ironic breath of fresh air.

Grade: A