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(04/04/10 6:00am)
The world has come a long way since the '80s. Back then, if
audiences demanded a monster-movie spectacle, they needed to call
on someone like Ray Harryhausen who could whip up the best
claymation creatures in the business, such as the beasts he created
for 1981's ""Clash of the Titans."" But in 2010, CGI is the nifty
new toy for filmmakers to use. Thus we now have Louis Leterrier's
remake of ""Clash of the Titans,"" which wields eye-popping special
effects so roaring crowds can see a spiffy new Kraken waltz around
Greece like an anarchist in Legoland. But sadly, it seems like the
Kraken did just as much damage to ""Clash's"" script as well,
because the actual story of the movie lies in ruins.
(03/23/10 6:00am)
As we are introduced to Raquel, the titular character of ""The
Maid,"" she is sitting alone in the nook of a kitchen, eating in
silence as the family she works for puts the finishing touches on a
birthday celebration. As their stifled laughs echo over the kitchen
counter, Raquel looks up and for a moment stares directly into the
camera, breaking the fourth wall and momentarily sharing with the
audience all of the oddly affectionate animosity she feels for her
employers.
(03/22/10 6:00am)
The past few weeks, accusations of anti-Semitism have been
lobbed back and forth across campus. Whether it is the Alpha
Epsilon Pi scandal or the Bradley Smith Holocaust-denier ad, recent
events have shown that the UW Jewish community is far from immune
to the ugliness of discrimination and hatred, even in supposedly
progressive Madison. In the wake of these controversies, it makes
some past comments of District 5 county board candidate Michael
Johnson even more disconcerting.
(03/18/10 6:00am)
War is hell and hell is other people, so it makes sense that the
most hellish part of war isn't necessarily fighting the opposing
forces but working with the people who are supposedly on your side,
as seen in the controversy surrounding the war in Iraq. The whole
situation has since developed a very nefarious ""Bourne"" movie
tone to it with all of the unsavory intelligence wheeling and
dealing that went on behind the scenes. As such, it should have
been a given that ""Bourne"" series director Paul Greengrass and
Jason Bourne himself, Matt Damon, would team up to tell that story
in ""Green Zone.""
(03/11/10 6:00am)
Brits love soccer, at times to an unhealthy degree. They love it
so much that they have been known to kill, maim and disembowel each
other in the name of football—and that is just the fans. The
coaches and players, if anything, are even more vile, vicious and
vitriolic, as shown in ""The Damned United,"" a biopic of former
English Premier League coach Brian Clough (Michael Sheen) and the
lead-up to his disastrous 44-day stint as head coach of league
juggernaut Leeds United.
(02/26/10 6:00am)
A couple of weeks ago, The Daily Cardinal crafted a week-long
feature for the opinion page dedicated to science education in
America. We took a look at how science is shaped in the mind-grapes
of America's adolescents, from pre-school all the way up to
Calculus 222. One of the key points we emphasized throughout the
week was the need for more people to think like scientists, to stop
taking things at face value and actually dig and experiment to find
the truth.
(02/25/10 6:00am)
As a musical artist, naming your album is an important task,
akin to naming your child. This is the first impression the musical
community is going to have of your work, long before they hear the
first set of chords, so it should come as no surprise when many
acts give their LPs flashy titles or names that are more abstract
than a Jackson Pollack painting. It helps give your work a unique
identity right off the bat. Perhaps that's what makes the simple,
declarative nature of It Was Easy, the title of the debut
album from D.C. one-man indie band Title Tracks, ironically stand
out. It's so nondescriptive—and that nondescriptive quality ends up
saying more about the album than any abstract reference ever
could.
(02/25/10 6:00am)
Buddy cop films often get a bad rap. In an art form that almost
requires constant re-invention in order to remain relevant and
engaging, anything tried and true like the buddy cop formula can
seem like it is yesterday's news. But oftentimes old comedy tropes
can be as hilarious as any edgy new trick on the block, especially
when they feature comedians in their prime who can make the
material feel fresh. This could have been the result in ""Cop
Out,"" a collaboration between slacker generation spokes-director
Kevin Smith and current comedy golden boy Tracy Morgan. Sadly,
""Cop Out"" instead proves that neither Smith nor Morgan can light
Twitter afire with LOL comments unless nestled in his comedy
niche.
(02/12/10 6:00am)
As we wrap up our week of op-eds dedicated to science education
in America, it feels like we should have some grandiose assessment
to make about the state of science. Some sort of condemnation or
proclamation should be issued, something that tells us exactly
where we are and where we should go in the future.
(02/05/10 6:00am)
You may not be able to tell from my relatively scrawny physique,
but I spend quite a bit of time at the SERF. And I keep coming back
despite seeing little in the way of results. School is stressful.
So is working 30 hours a week at a newspaper for no pay. Doing some
cardio and weight training at UW's recreational facilities helps
ease a bit of that stress. And while my physical gains are minimal,
it does a lot to keep me sane.
(01/25/10 6:00am)
Somewhere in the world, there is a very happy 13-year-old
Evangelical Christian boy. After years of struggling to find a
happy compromise between Bible-thumping religiosity and the
bullet-riddled fight scenes of modern action flicks, Hollywood has
finally melded the two together in the most maladroitly literal way
possible. With the release of ""Legion,"" hyperactive Sunday school
graduates have finally realized their ultimate wet dream fantasy:
angels fighting with machine guns.
(01/20/10 6:00am)
When associated with a successful act, it can be hard to break
out of its shadow and make it on your own. Just ask Conan O'Brien.
Anybody in this scenario is always faced with the
rock-and-a-hard-place dilemma of the need to find a unique style
while making use of the strengths that made past collaborations so
successful.
(01/19/10 6:00am)
Winter break is now over, and it is time for all of us at The
Daily Cardinal to shake the dust off our word processors and get
back to work. Surely we're in for four months of exciting breaking
news, insightful commentary and pulse-pounding investigative
reporting.
(12/15/09 6:00am)
Japandroids' debut LP, Post-Nothing, is not
particularly original. Then again, saying Post-Nothing
isn't all that original itself is not all that original—after all,
the album is titled Post-Nothing. Japandroids aren't
looking to blaze any new trails in garage rock, but why should they
when the band already has a well-paved six-lane highway blazed
ahead of it? All band members Brian King and David Prowse seem
intent to do is continue the well-crafted tradition of their
predecessors, all while making a kickass record that runs strong
from start to finish. On Post-Nothing, they definitely
succeeded. From the charging rhythm of ""The Boys Are Leaving
Town"" to the paradoxically smooth-yet-jarring wrap-up of ""I Quit
Girls,"" Post-Nothing simply does not have any weak
points. What the album does have are several stand-out tracks,
including the infinitely catchy ""Wet Hair,"" with its id-centric
focus on uncontrollable lust that is so intense it is impossible to
listen to without getting caught up in the feeling. Other bands can
be as innovative as Thomas Edison if they want, but sometimes all
an album needs is a good dose of enthusiasm. Thankfully,
Japandroids are more than willing to dole that out in spades.
(12/15/09 6:00am)
The much-hyped release of Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest
could have led to abject failure. True, it got the band more
attention than it has ever had, both critically and commercially,
but all too often bands can collapse under the pressure of that
good press, even if they put out a record that is good, but not
great.
(12/15/09 6:00am)
mso-ansi-language:EN-US"">Generally speaking, we're not big fans
of metal at The Daily Cardinal. More often than not, most of us
tend to follow our indie music biases, and we stray away from
anything that reaches a decibel count beyond what our sensitive
ears can handle. I myself have been particularly guilty of this in
the past, but I made an exception for Crack the Skye, the
latest album from New Wave metal band Mastodon. I may not be the
world's foremost expert on metal, so it's hard to do an honest
critique of Mastodon from the viewpoint of a diehard fan. But in
the greater scope of music of 2009, there were few albums I ended
up putting on repeat and listening to over and over again in one
sitting, and one of them was Crack the Skye.?
(12/15/09 6:00am)
Emotion is a tool that is so often overlooked by artists in
modern music. Truth, longing, elation, disgust and the rest of the
emotional gamut appear everywhere, but they usually exist somewhere
below the music, taking secondary status to the rhythm and the
melody. It isn't often that a song comes along with as much genuine
gut-wrenching pathos as a well-crafted drama, let alone an entire
album. But that is exactly what you get with Hospice from
the Antlers: an album that goes to such jarring, raw emotional
depths that only the coldest of souls would fail to be affected by
it.
(12/15/09 6:00am)
(12/13/09 6:00am)
(12/10/09 6:00am)