Columnists - The Daily Cardinal

COLUMNS

‘Cheap Thrills’ does not skimp on delights

By Austin Wellens | Apr. 16, 2014

So, over the weekend I got to spend some time with E.L. Katz and Pat Healy, who respectively directed and starred in the new film “Cheap Thrills,” and I learned a thing or two. I learned about Danish people. I learned about what really matters when you’re making a movie. I found out that some men can just rock a mustache. And I learned that sometimes light and dark can blend together beautifully.

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Column: Excitement building from college football spring games

By Grey Satterfield | Apr. 15, 2014

The dark clouds rolled away as the temperature crested into the 50s. U2 blasted through Camp Randall Stadium as the Badgers charged onto the field. College football is back.

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Keeping mundanity in modern games

By Adam Paris | Apr. 15, 2014

Mundanity is alluring. Typically a sentence like that would seem like a fairly overt contradiction, but when it comes to video games it tends to hold true. Games are built on bombast, splendor and extravagance. Most commercial games appeal to the player looking for the greatest spectacle possible. Graphical power struggles have existed in the industry for decades, but the minute, sparkly details in modern consoles are exacerbated in the battle for people’s loyalty.

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Turnover constitutes reality of bands

By Brian Weidy | Apr. 15, 2014

Last week, when Nirvana was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—which is a sham and will probably be addressed in another column—they needed someone to replace the deceased Kurt Cobain. So in came a quartet of female singers: St. Vincent, Lorde, Joan Jett and Kim Gordon.

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Column: North Carolina academic scandal grossly exaggerated

By Jack Baer and Adelina Yankova | Apr. 14, 2014

I’m going to make a claim: Mary Willingham can’t read.

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‘Bates Motel’ an uneasy take on Hitchcock

By Callie Kollenbroich | Apr. 13, 2014

Let’s talk about Alfred Hitchcock—master of suspense and arguably categorized among some of the greatest American filmmakers of all time. One of his most acclaimed thrillers, as well as one of my personal favorites, was the 1960 American classic, “Psycho.” Some critics called it the most terrifying film ever made. It was not only groundbreaking stylistically but ideologically as well. Having wanted it to retain the look and feel of a cheap exploitation flick, “Psycho” featured sexually explicit content and brutal violence that was largely frowned upon by studio censors—it had a shower scene before the shower scene was a thing. Whether or not you agree, cinephiles of the last fifty years continue to applaud him as a pioneer in the industry for his precise pacing and ability to subvert our expectations through meticulous plot construction, impressive camerawork and clever editing, among other things.

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Column: What the story of Princess Lacey has done for us all

By Jonah Beleckis | Apr. 10, 2014

This week, we are all Michigan State fans.

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Roaming through the many diverse worlds of other books

By Maham Hasan | Apr. 9, 2014

So the other day it occurred to me that although we spend a lot of time thinking over what country we want to study abroad in, travel to and have secretly unrealistic hopes of living in one day, we never really give much thought to the planet or universe in which we want to live. Stay with me here. Granted, Earth has its perks, being the only place with oxygen, water and life—or so they’ll have us think—but I personally believe we could use a change of scenery sometimes.

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Video games lacking in laughs

By Adam Paris | Apr. 8, 2014

Finding humor in games is generally like trying to search for some really blunt needle in a stack of crap—it’s pretty unpleasant usually barely worth the effort. Writing in games is generally horrendous, so trying to garner any amount of hilarity out of stilted scenes is about the best you can get.

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Column: Going through the five stages of grief after Wisconsin’s loss

By Grey Satterfield | Apr. 8, 2014

Saturday night was sickening. When Traevon Jackson’s pull up jumper clanged off the rim and fell to the floor, the city of Madison fell with it. It’s nights like Saturday that make it hard to be a sports fan.

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Column: A way-too-early look at next years' NCAA basketball preseason top five

By Jack Baer | Apr. 7, 2014

Now that Connecticut has won the title, it’s time to do what we always do when the season ends: Think about next season. Here’s a preseason top five for next year in no particular order.

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Side projects balance bland with fun

By Brian Weidy | Apr. 7, 2014

When a band is together for a long time, it is natural that individual musicians in the group will want to branch out. Whether it’s to start a full-fledged solo career or to have a band on the side—much to the chagrin of fans of any band that has had this happen—side projects exist. To top that off, most of the time they are terrible.

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Column: NHL playoff picture slowly becoming clearer

By Adee Feiner | Apr. 6, 2014

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it’s almost that time of year. When fans start whipping out their rally towels, bragging rights against the team you hate the most are at an all-time high and men grow beards that could put a bear to shame.

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No shame in guilty pleasure television

By Callie Kollenbroich and Ben Pierson & Victoria Statz | Apr. 6, 2014

I’m sure you all have your guilty pleasures—those delightful bits of enjoyment you try to eradicate from your search histories in attempts to salvage your credibility—and I am no exception. Whether you enjoy the occasional supernatural romance or find some sort of bizarre pleasure in watching bourgeois housewives pull each others’ hair, these underrated—or maybe properly rated—TV trifles are both the joy and the bane of our existence. Here are some of my current favorite guilty pleasures. I won’t judge you if you don’t judge me.

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Reading between the lines of book titles

By Maham Hasan | Apr. 2, 2014

We all like to rise above and pretend none of us judge a book by its cover, but we do. Oh, we so do, and we’re proud. Because this is Sparta! Or just a great line that I use absolutely any and every excuse to use all the time. What’s worse than judging a book by its cover though is when books with seemingly innocuous covers trap you. The sheer rage and nonexistent gamma radiation that courses through your veins when that happens is not fun, but a sight to behold nonetheless. We’ve all been there and there’s no shame in admitting that you enticed the neighbor’s cat to pee on that book. Yes, you were tricked that badly. We understand which is why I shall dedicate—nay construct an altar!—this week’s column to dismembering some of the many, exhaustingly many books that dare pull you in by innocent covers that hide the grisly and embarrassing details of its failure.

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Column: Welcoming Atlético Madrid as threats to Spanish title

By Jonah Beleckis | Apr. 2, 2014

Spanish soccer has been widely criticized for essentially being a two-horse race for years.

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Column: Scouts play too much importance on NFL Pro Days

By Whitney Newman and Grey Satterfield | Apr. 1, 2014

The NFL Draft is fast approaching, and players’ stocks are rising and falling at a rate faster than Mel Kiper Jr.’s hair in the moments before he goes on set.

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ABC’s ‘Resurrection’ shows broadcast TV still dead on arrival

By Callie Kollenbroich | Mar. 30, 2014

Our parents will invariably tell us that they love their children equally, but we’re old enough to know it’s a big fat lie. There’s always one child in the family who seems to glow with a golden aura of promise and success—he earns good grades, says his please and thank you’s and controls his peers with the bat of an eyelash. Meanwhile, the other kid is off doing God knows what and getting into all sorts of trouble in a desperate attempt to garner any form of residual attention. I tend to think of traditional broadcast television as the latter of the two, and I feel incredibly guilty treating it as something of an ugly stepchild while I continue to be charmed by the allure of its cable counterpart. It’s time to see what the little rascal has been up to during those many months of neglect.

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Column: Wichita State deserves credit for the impressive season they had

By Blake Duffin | Mar. 28, 2014

The Wichita State Shockers had a season for the record books, going an incredible 32-0 in the regular season. This great run was topped with a Missouri Valley Conference win and a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.

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The worlds of Wes Anderson

By Austin Wellens | Mar. 26, 2014

So, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” came out and I saw it, but before we get to that I’d like to take a minute to frame the film with two masterpieces from last year.