Choosing a Photo
“It’s time for the warmest wishes…and eating your illegitimate children.”
Were there just not enough photos to choose from or was this really the best?
Archive for December, 2009
A Song To Study By
Finals week is coming and with the catchy acronyms comes the realization that many of us have fourteen plus weeks of learning to do before December 17th. Long hours in the library are tedious at best, but the deafening silence can make any extended stay at Walter downright unbearable. If you need a theme song to your finals study experience, look no further than the Kruder & Dorfmeister remix of “Useless” by Depeche Mode.
Finding its place in the first half of the stunning K & D Sessions, “Useless” is a slice of downtempo bliss that even those unfamiliar …
Hey News, I’m Internet
On Nov. 17th, MPR aired “The Future of Journalism,” a program that hoped to discuss concepts of media both new and old while exploring the possibilities of the future. Host Carrie Miller’s main question for the hour was “How will investigative journalism look in the future?” Miller’s question was directed at guests Tom Rosensteil from the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune. Both guests’ stable positions in the media make their viewpoints less likely to be skewed by the need for …
First Annual Nordic Lights Film Festival, Opening Night
On Friday, Nov. 20 the Nordic community of Minneapolis lifted the cinematic curtains to unveil some of the best films from the region. It showcased films from Finland, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Sweden, and Greenland that chronicled Nordic culture, people, and politics throughout the weekend. In between screenings, presenters gave synopses and introduced the audience to the background milieu of the particular film. Taking place in the Parkway Theater, the atmosphere buzzed with foreign chatter, Cognac, and Swedish buns.
The premiere was entitled Prostitution Behind the Veil, in which an Iranian …
Movie Review: The Fantastic Mr. Fox
Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox is fresh and wonderful. Based on the Roald Dahl novel of the same name, it is what the child inside me has longed to see since The Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s witty enough in dialogue to keep adults entertained and playful enough to keep young children captivated.
Visually, Fantastic is radiant beyond imagination. The stop-motion animation gives it a unique feel; if it had been made with computer-generated animation like a Pixar movie, the cartooniness would have taken over. Sure, The Incredibles received great acclaim in its attempts to mimic a blockbuster, …
Them Crooked Vultures – Them Crooked Vultures
The newly-formed supergroup Them Crooked Vultures carries a unique burden of high expectations. The band is composed of Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age), Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana), and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin; his first earnest foray into music since the band’s breakup nearly 30 years ago). Each member has his own pedigree and interests, but they seem to be united by a nonchalance and aversion to pretense that bleeds into the music they have produced. Their eponymous debut sounds less like an album and more like a series of catchy, impromptu jams cobbled …
Television: Community
There are two commonalities among most of the television networks: they produce mystery crime dramas, and they all suck. Fortunately, NBC has come to the rescue once again with its new show Community.
Community derives its name from the location and premise of the show: community college. Perhaps by happenstance, but more likely on purpose, the show’s creation comes at a time when real community colleges are being put into the spotlight—TIME Magazine recently ran an article on the subject: “Can Community Colleges Save the U.S. Economy?”
This is all beside the point: the show is absolutely brilliant. …
Dark City
The City, screened at Oak St. Cinema on Nov. 19, may sound like any other violent, low-budget, action flick trying to live up to Scorsese or Tarantino. But a clever premise laced with smart subtext and wicked humor makes this a film worth seeing.
“I’d like people to walk away questioning what it is by their nature that makes them entertained by certain aspects of media,” writer/director James Vogel says. “Why do we as an audience expect to see violence and sex in films, and why are we entertained by it?”
Vogel, and his co-writers and stars, Ezra Stead and Greg …
MSP Galleries
The last thing crossing most consumers’ minds in a recession is: It would be awfully nice to fill some wall space with a nice piece of locally-produced art. Hmm…
But why is this? Galleries won’t stay afloat on their own – most continue their humble existence on donations and sales of the artwork they feature. Between Minneapolis’s free museums and innumerable art galleries, we’re an art-spoiled crowd – sometimes we need to be reminded of the careful world these galleries exist in.
Franklin Art Works
To your right hang …
Inner Thoughts of a Smoker
There is a great “no-smoking” public service announcement by John Waters that used to play before B-movies in the 80s. Waters sits in front of the camera with a cigarette dancing between his hand and mouth. He emphasizes the theatre’s no-smoking policy before tearing the rule apart. As Waters sees it, smoking keeps the ushers employed. All the while, the director continues with his deep, cancerous drags.
To a smoker such as myself, Waters’ message exists as a hellish taunt. The words and images of the director tease like an older …
Long-Growing Media Malaise: Tobacco
As the United States nears the completion and disclosure of its 2010 census, it will become abundantly clear how public health has responded to a decade of policy change. The writing is on the wall through interstitial studies, however: public health is horrendous on a national scale. Obesity and its associated ailments increasingly characterize the American populace – largely through a failure of government to conduct due diligence. Tobacco usage, in particular, has been the bane of the health movement for decades. After billions of dollars in corporate payouts, federal ad campaigns, and products capitalizing on the social …
Althusser On Crack, Not Ideology
In his revisions of the expression ‘ideology’ and his proposal for a theory of ideology ‘in general,’ Althusser makes two assertions. First he says ideology is a representation of “the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence.”
Imagine an old flatbed projector that is capable of producing a complete image of an essentially incoherent reality – the “real conditions of existence.” This complete experience could then be projected onto a wall (the wall and the projector are both within the projection as constituents of the world, but we will ignore this paradox for purpose of abstraction). To make …
Fiscal Democracy and U: Let’s Rock Bruinik’s Boat
“In all of its activities, the University strives to sustain an open exchange of ideas in an environment that embodies the values of academic freedom, responsibility, integrity, and cooperation; that provides an atmosphere of mutual respect…”
So reads, in part, the mission statement of the University of Minnesota. It would seem that our fair University is founded on strong democratic principles, and the free exchange of ideas, even those some might find irritating or disruptive. So why then, is the University’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society facing sanctions for displaying several banners critical of the administration as part of …
There Is No “Me” in “Wii:” From Mass Media to Crass Media
As a grumpy person with a predisposition toward being depressed, let me begin by expressing my love of escapism. Whether upbeat, morose, bitter, or just strange; a good film, book, or record should spirit us away from the ordinary and deposit us in a place where we don’t have to deal with our own lives, if only for a short while. Likewise, good creations make us active participants in what we are watching/reading/hearing, and the very best is able to forge a connection between it and ourselves. When this happens, we’re able to walk away with the understanding (hopefully) that …