Thursday, November 19, 2009

What to Expect When Expecting New Moon


By Caitlin Tadlock

I like Twilight, but being a college student makes me an objective Twilight fan.  I feel like I am separated from some Twi-hards in the sense that I know Twilight was a bad movie and am thoroughly aware that the books are at the 4th grade reading level.  With that in mind, this is a list of ten things to look out for when watching New Moon on Friday at the Globe Theatre.
 
1.)  Muscles in the Rain
Taylor Lautner and the rest of the Quileute boys will be showing off their muscles in rain-soaked Washington for the majority of the film for tween girl and twi-mom reasons.  Lautner will also be taking off his shirt every time Bella is in trouble, when he’s about to ride his motorcycle somewhere, or when there is a vampire in his midst.
 
2.) Kristen Stewart's performace is an A+
Kristen Stewart will do a great job acting out the depression her character Bella goes through when Edward leaves her.  One neat thing that Chris Weitz does is a 360 degree of Bella’s life without Edward as the seasons pass behind her.  Half of the movie will play out like a girl going through a heroine withdrawal.
 
3.) Bad acting
Dakota Fanning is not a cute 5 year-old anymore and I have noticed that people don’t realize this when they cast her in movies.  The werewolves are newcomers to acting and the movie clips shown so far present unprofessional and cheesy acting from the wolf pack.
 
4.)  Silly looking CG Wolves
My friend and I busted out laughing when we first saw Jacob Black transform into a werewolf.  It might have been the consensus that the werewolves were in no way scary. The first trailers from this summer and the ones now show a different Jacob wolf but it’s actually not any scarier.
 
5.) Better Tech Credits and Visual Effects
No matter what, the werewolves are going to look ridiculous because they’re CGI werewolves.  But, New Moon in the visual sense will be better looking all around without Catherine Hardwicke’s extreme close-ups and long moments of awkward silence.
 
6.)  Nauseating Fan Girl screams
If you can resist avoiding the theatre for the first seven or eight days there is a good chance you can avoid the twi-hard gasps and screams when Edward apparitions appear for two seconds at a time throughout the movie.

 
7.)PG-13 Violence
More vampire be-headings will take place during New Moon.  Also expect a ton of werewolf fights, Volturi fights, renegade vampire fights and a Jacob v. Edward showdown.
 
8.)  Better Sparkles?
With better special effects come better sparkle effects from Edward…Let’s hope.

9.) Kill yourself scenes
New Moon is going to be depressing no matter how you look at it.  Get ready for the saddest 2 hours and 2 minutes of your youth, besides when you get broken up with in real life.
 
10.) The Eclipse trailer in front of New Moon
a.    Just kidding, but the Remember Me trailer starring Robert Pattinson will be.

Celebrating the Life and Death of Geocities

By Caitlin Tadlock

October 26, 2009, marked the last breath of Yahoo’s website maker Geocities. No more “.GIF” roses or stars around banner advertisements and no more polyphonic background music when you visit your favorite boy band fan site.

It is obvious as to why Geocities has closed its doors, since there are so many better webpage builder options out there, but why not keep it around for historical web reasons? That is what groups Archiveteam and Archive.org have been doing since the announcement of Geocities’ demise. The two archival web groups came together to track down as many Geocities web pages as possible to file them away for public viewing records.

My first Geocities experience started with building a fan page dedicated to the Mickey Mouse club in 1997 or 98, and of course my second one was for The Backstreet Boys. The background was black and I had tiny GIF sparkles flashing around the locks of bad hair from the Backstreet Boys. I stopped updating my fan pages when I gained musical taste and when they made me pay to have a certain amount of JPEGs stored on their website.

The following are students’ reflections of Geocities webpages:

“Geocities changed my life. Whether I was browsing music libraries for MIDI versions of my favorite late-90s pop songs or checking my homework assignments on Mr. Nyhuis' 8th Grade Math Webpage, my web-surfing experience was always enriched by the wide variety of resources that Geocities had to offer. I'm appalled at Yahoo's decision to shut down the website, and I urge everyone to pray that they will reconsider their unforgivable action.” - Dav Timm

“I think all my old bands in high school had a Geocities page but no one actually knew how to use it. Sweet stuff.” - Robert Varner

The online archive teams only got a tiny piece of the huge pie when filing away Geocities webpages. Thousands, maybe millions of Arial and Comic Sans fonted pages are lost forever in the World Wide Webular black hole of oblivion.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

'Pirate Radio' Sets Sail


By Caitlin Tadlock
caitlintadlock@gmail.com

Sassy, classy and cool is Richard Curtis’ (director of “Love Actually”) British comedy “Pirate Radio”, formally known as “The Boat that Rocked”. “Pirate Radio” has an all-star Brit lineup that includes Billy Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Rhys Darby (“Flight of the Concords”), Nick Frost (“Shaun of the Dead”), Tallulah Riley, Emma Thompson and introducing America’s new British muse, Tom Sturridge. The film features only two American leads, Phillip Seymour Hoffman and January Jones (“Mad Men”).

In the 1960’s rock & roll was limited to two hours of BBC play each week in the UK. In “Pirate Radio” a group of radio renegade DJs’ set in the sea, outside the jurisdiction and broadcast rock & roll 24/7. Pirate radio ships got away with a lot of things that are regulated even today by the Federal Communications Commission. In the film the British government stops at nothing to shut down radio rock.

I believe there is a big difference between the UK’s “The Boat that Rocked” and America’s “Pirate Radio”. Even in the movie trailers the two focuses on different themes of the movie. In the British version the trailer revolves around all of the DJs’, the life of new addition Young Carl (Tom Sturridge) and the British government shutting them down. In the American version the trailer focuses almost solely on Philip Seymour Hoffman’s character “The Count” as a sort of rock savior to the ship, which is hardly the major point in the story.

The film seems to be edited heavily for American audience. The story jumped scenarios too quickly and characters and story lines were underdeveloped that made the audience fill-in-the-blank in places. All together “Pirate Radio” had extremely choppy editing. The music was the driving force but the selection was lacking too, understandably they couldn’t dish out the money at the time for any Beatles songs to be featured in the film.

“Pirate Radio” still has its very British sense of humor, which is good. The characters all have their unique trait and their senses of fashion are over-the-top. I’ve been in the radio business since I was 17-years-old and have had the unfortunate opportunity to work with some of the most greasy, grimy money hungry blokes. Today, radio is run by monopoly corporations headed by overweight and soulless beings that only care about website hits and revenue. 40-year-old pop DJs’ jump at the chance to get a picture with Miley Cyrus for the purpose of looking cool to under age kids on Facebook. “Pirate Radio” is refreshing in a way that every rock DJ, news reporter, intern and boss care about what they play and the fans. Basically, music was the driving force for radio.

Even if the movie lacks some historical musical aspects, the “Pirate Radio” soundtrack makes up for its lackluster. The Who, The Kinks, The Turtles, The Beach Boys, Jimi Hendrix and Cream make up a fourth of the two disc album with Duffy being the only current artist featured.

The theatre’s audience on Friday night gave “Pirate Radio” applause when the credits rolled. It was a small crowd, the mindless explosion trash “2012” came out that day, but it got the point across that “Pirate Radio” was a delight to the eyes and ears. I will find a way to purchase the British version “The Boat that Rocked” before I watch or buy “Pirate Radio” again. I have an inkling that the original may be all around better than the export they gave to us ‘mericans.

Monday, November 9, 2009

The Beat is Dead



By Sam Adams

Friday October 30th marked the last day of St. Louis’ hip-hop station 100.3 The Beat. At noon the hip-hop and R&B format abruptly changed to Halloween music. The station ended with Boyz II Men’s “End of the Road” and started the twelve o’clock hour with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” followed by the theme song to “Halloween” and “Ghostbusters”. Within an hour fans of the station flocked to their Twitters and Facebooks asking what was happening to The Beat.

Due to lack of listeners for the past few years, Clear Channel decided to pull the plug on The Beat and all of its employees. The station had low ratings due in part to its rival hip-hop station Hot 104.1. It is expected to change to a rock format in January to compete with 105.7 The Point.

At midnight on November 1st the 100.3 website changed from a Halloween theme to Christmas 100.3. At 6:00 a.m. Christmas music started pumping out into the airwaves. The holiday music will last until January 1st, when the format will make another change.

Employees that were let go from 100.3 The Beat at noon on October 30th included KiKi the First Lady, DJ AJ, Taylor J, Dwight Stone (D.Stone) and Selena J who is now solely on The Beat’s sister station Majic 104.9.

The Death Set Review


By Matt Stuttler

The Death Set’s most recent album Worldwide, released in 2008, passed
under the radar of the majority of well known trend spotter blogs.
This is an utter shame, as the band brings a jangly, electronic,
sample heavy take on punk rock akin to Dan Deacon and vocals
reminiscent of a happier Mae Shi. Forming in Australia then moving to
America to feed on the teenagers of our country’s East Coast, The
Death Set quickly took to the proverbial skies and toured with
Brooklyn band Japanther. After signing to Counter records, The Death
Set released Worldwide. Some highlights of the album include
“Negative Thinking”, beginning with some sweet samples of
pre-programmed voice modulators then jumping straight into a
consistent dance beat with a smooth as butter guitar lead leaking all
over the place. The band doesn’t suffer in the least from only having
two members, proving that heart and pure weirdness can make up for any
deficiency of live performing members, such as on “Selective
Memories”. Another stand out of the album is “Impossible”; que'd in
with an old school hip hop stomp and racing between thick synths and
shout along verses. Check out this band if you’re looking for hope in
advancement in this art-stricken society that is modern music.

http://www.myspace.com/thedeathset

Donald Miller Book Tour Comes to Greenville College



By Wendy Smith
The Donald Miller “A Million Miles Tour” comes to Greenville College on Tuesday, November 17 at 7:00 p.m. On Miller’s 65-city national book tour he will talk about his latest book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years. Greenville College is the only stop in Southern Illinois.

General admission for the event is $15 or free for a limited number Greenville College students, faculty, and staff. More details will be released soon about how students, faculty, and staff can get a ticket. You can purchase general tickets at www.iTickets.com

Miller is best known for his New York Times Bestseller Blue Like Jazz, which has been adapted into a movie. A sought-after speaker, Miller has delivered lectures to a wide-range of audiences including the Women of Faith Conference, the Veritas Forum at Harvard University, and the Veritas Forum at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California.


A Million Miles in a Thousand Years amusingly and tenderly chronicles Miller's experience with filmmakers as they edit his life for the movie. He also shares the principles storytellers use to make a story meaningful and exciting, as well as applies them to real life.

The book tour also features comedian, actress, and author of Angry Conversations with God, Susan Isaacs.
Isaacs, an alumnus of The Groundlings Sunday Company, has an MFA in screenwriting from the University of Southern California and has had many guest appearances on hit television shows including Seinfeld. Isaacs has guest lectured at Pepperdine University, Orange Coast College, Santa Monica College, and teaches for the Act One Program.

Go to www.amillionmiles.com or contact media@greenville.edu for more information.