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(04/26/07 5:00am)
This being the last article I will write for this newspaper, I'd like to share my thoughts on a topic a bit more philosophical than one typically finds in the pages of the News-Letter. My space is too limited to fully explain my position, but I hope you will bear with me, and perhaps even come to consider a different perspective on the very core of what it means to live in modern times.
(03/29/07 5:00am)
Addiction is a scourge. It digs deep into your flesh and cries for satisfaction without relent. Sometimes, you confront it, dive into its insatiable maw in a heroic act of defiance. It has taken you into the depths, but it cannot keep you there. Usually, however, we are overwhelmed by the weight of it. Grasping blindly for control, we cannot but falter. I have one such addiction. I'm a public radio junkie.On Point. Talk of the Nation. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. A Prairie Home Companion. Baltimore's own Mark Steiner Show. Multitudes more. Public radio is media par excellence thanks to shows like these. But even amid all this excellence, there is one show that truly stands out as a kind of soul for not only public radio, but also the medium as a whole. It perseveres as a genuine representative of "old time" radio. Indeed, it reaches back to a fundamental human practice. It is the oral tradition mastered to a degree that other radio can rarely achieve.This American Life (TAL), hosted by one of the sharpest minds and most dulcet voices in radio, Ira Glass, began humbly in 1995 as Your Radio Playhouse. After a year on the air it had changed its name, won a Peabody Award, and asserted itself as a singular entity in American media. Then as today, TAL strove to do one thing above all: tell good stories.In fact, TAL's stories have consistently been quite a bit more than good. Adjectives like poignant, arresting, witty, nostalgic and wise are probably more suitable. There is no territory in which TAL fails to tread. Episodes have ranged from lit-mag writing-prompt style themes like `Love,' `Obsession,' and `Summer,' to those that, before hearing them brought to life on radio, only play at the edges of understanding: `Before it Had a Name,' `Say Anything,' and one of this year's great delights, `Houses of Ill Repute,' to name a few.It is edited with all the care of finest craftsmanship and incorporates a subliminal soundtrack that carries the listener lightly toward some of the purest entertainment available today. Perhaps the most refreshing aspect of TAL is its boundlessness. Whatever theme can compel a story, the show's creators will imagine it.Wherever that story is, they will find it. Apparently the executives at the cable network Showtime felt the same way, and gave Glass and his team the opportunity to film a few episodes for TV. Last week, This American Life premiered on Showtime with many fans wondering just what they would get from what seemed an almost heretical transition.The answer isn't entirely clear as of yet. No doubt, the TV show will evolve and, one can only hope, improve. But the pilot seems to lack something in comparison to its frequency-modulated predecessor, albeit through no fault of the show's creators. In fact, the show deserves high marks for its capacity both to evoke the intimate quality of the radio program as well as strike out on its own. Most distinctly, where TAL is mainly narrative punctuated by documentary, the pilot successfully takes the opposite tack.The difficulties, ones that I trust the creators will tackle, arise in the medium of television itself. There is something about the way in which people behave in front of the camera that lends the barest whiff of the artificial. It is less the nature of the pilot's production that engenders this trace of disingenuousness than the subjects themselves. On TV, even commonplace people appear driven to act.That sense of heightened performance on TAL TV emerges when the interviewees challenge Glass or attempt a bold comment. Part of the appeal of TAL is that it reveals the dramatic events surrounding the lives of seemingly ordinary people, but that is lost when both the events and the people themselves fall into the former category.But while TAL TV has some early kinks, there seems little question that Glass and his crew will overcome them. Television is a medium that has only recently become artistically credible, and the folks at TAL can be counted on to take it in unexpected and worthy directions.
(03/22/07 5:00am)
At one point in the film 300, a group of 90-percent-nude Spartans, each of whom bleeds liquid nitrogen and wields pectoral muscles that could condense a Cadillac to gelatin, fends off an attack by leprotic ninjas. They do so with the aid of a mountain of corpses and the power of freedom, which is like kryptonite to bad guys. Now you know whether you will enjoy the movie.
(03/10/07 5:00am)
Remember the aphorism you were told as a child when you complained that, among all your friends, only you were not doing karate/getting dance lessons/building a machine pumped 150-psi pneumatic potato cannon with a muzzle velocity of 200 mph and 400-meter range? You turned your pleading eyes upon your mother or father who would wisely respond, "If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?"
(02/15/07 5:00am)
To say that the recently announced candidacy of Barack Obama has generated buzz would be the most egregious of understatements. For disaffected liberals, Obama shines so brightly, he may well go supernova. But those ebullient ones signing onto the Senator's campaign may be unwittingly reprising the role of Middle American and evangelical conservatives in the 2000 election. That is, foolishly supporting a candidate on the basis of little more than "hope."
(02/15/07 5:00am)
Given the politics of our day, with its warrantless wiretaps and acts dubbed PATRIOT, it should come as little surprise that surveillance is a hit theme among makers of good film and television. Michael Haneke's Caché (2005) and David Simon's masterpiece HBO series The Wire are only two fine examples. Now, you can add The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen), a stellar debut effort from writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, to that august list.
(02/02/07 5:00am)
The U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a bill that will, over the course of a five-year period, cut in half the interest rate charged to undergraduate students supported by certain federally funded loans.
(02/01/07 5:00am)
Beginning in the financial district in the south and intersecting West University Parkway in the north, North Charles Street is one of the principal arteries in a city humming to the beat of 650,000 souls. Between those geographic extremes are the classical grandeur of Mount Vernon, the ramshackle commercial and residential areas of the low and mid-20s and our very own campus. After years in Baltimore, however, many, perhaps most, of us are so inured to the sites of this thoroughfare that we notice practically nothing at all. Thankfully, there are those among us who see things quite differently -- artists who observe and interpret a world that could so easily be ignored as another example of the urban mundane.
(01/28/07 5:00am)
Many of you spent your vacations doing spectacular things. Some visited distant countries. Others did important research, wrote a play or built something extravagant like, maybe, the world's largest Plaster of Paris sculpture of Sophia Loren's legs. I did none of these things. For the most part, I tested out seat cushions.
(01/04/07 5:00am)
Shadow Company is by no means the finestdocumentary of this or any year, but the film, which documents thepresence of private military contractors (a euphemism for mercenaries)in Iraq, remains almost necessary viewing. According to Shadow Company,there is one private contractor for every 10 soldiers in Iraq, and thecompanies employing them do not always act in the interests of theAmerican government or the Iraqi people. The film asks a variety ofimportant ethical question, most vitally: What are the consequences ofsurrendering the state monopoly on violence? The documentary's greateststrength, however, lies in its use of footage from the ground in Iraq.It shows the chaos and carnage that the U.S. media, in conjunction withthe government, has decided we ought not see.
(12/07/06 5:00am)
During a recent press conference following his team's loss to the Indianapolis Colts, New England Patriots coach Bill Belichik was asked to comment on some of the adjustments the team made in the second half. His response: "We did some things well. There were some other things that could have been better. We just have to do a better job. We have to be more consistent. We have to coach better. We have to play better. We just have to do a better job, that's all."
(11/30/06 5:00am)
First they said you'd go crazy. Sure, you'd laugh a little, but soon you'd pull out an axe and chop some helpless damsel to bits. Then they told you you'd kill yourself. When that didn't work, they tried to convince you you'd soon be on to harder stuff. Next, they said you'd fry your brain. When you played Pac-Man at the arcade, you were informed that winners don't do them. Now they say you're not being yourself.
(11/18/06 5:00am)
I was riding my usually intrepid dromedary Beefsteak through the Moroccan Sahara, waves of sand cascading along the dunes in his wake. We were approaching a dune's crest when Beefsteak's rear left foot lost traction. He panicked and bounded upright over the crest at alarming speed. We careened down the opposite face of the dune in a barely controlled fall. Beefsteak was moving faster now, too fast, beyond the accepted limits of ungulate travel. He kicked up a snake of red dust so long and dense it was visible from Marrakech. The beast needed to be stopped. I foolishly yanked on the reigns, severing the leather straps from their retaining pin. Windblown sand shocking my exposed cheeks, I wrapped my arms around Beefsteak's well-muscled neck. But it was no good. I couldn't hold on. As I tumbled to my grisly demise, I thought, "If only I'd read `How to Regain Control of a Spooked Camel' on wikiHow...'
(11/04/06 5:00am)
Like many politically controversial films, Death of a President has been met with a fair amount of browbeating, disdain and enough prejudicial jumping to conclusions to make Office Space's Tom Smykowski proud. To some, the idea of a movie about the assassination of a sitting president is nothing short of monstrous, while others, surely fewer in number, find themselves wondering in their idle moments whether it might not be for the best. Death of a President absolutely does not hold the latter position, but it also is not just some sick joke. That being said, it comports itself, for the most part, with stultifying austerity and an insipid message.
(10/26/06 5:00am)
The increasing financial plight of students applying to medical school represents a most disconcerting trend. The article in this week's News-Letter discussing the exorbitant fees footed by medical school applicants is probably a revelation to many students. Yet, the many fees appear to be just another element of the excessively costly medical training process.
(10/12/06 5:00am)
I happen to be a great fan of the television show Battlestar Gallactica. It is dramatic, well-written and exceptionally well-paced. I also like the fact that in place of a familiar four-letter word they substitute "frack." Everyone knows what they really mean and the decision on the part of the writers to use the neologism as often as possible and in the same manner as the genuine article is tantamount to, well, a big "frack you" to the Federal Communications Commission, self-appointed arbiters of linguistic "decency" in media.
(09/29/06 5:00am)
Apathetic. Particularly in regard to politics, it is a word often used to describe today's twenty-somethings -- certainly most Hopkins students. This apathy is a subject of lamentation, and rightfully so, but how to alter the indifferent perspective of young Americans? Half Nelson, a film explicitly about change, seeks to produce it by awakening in viewers their dormant political consciousness. But the filmmakers are under no delusions: The burden placed upon he who has opened his eyes to injustice is heavy indeed.
(09/20/06 5:00am)
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(04/27/06 5:00am)
Ever wonder what life would be like if Gavrilo Princip hadn't been in Moritz Schiller's café as Archduke Franz Ferdinand passed by? What if Hitler's mother had had a freak miscarriage or King George III wasn't a demented porphyric loon? Speculative historical fiction is a fascinating and tricky genre, but if done well also tremendously fulfilling as great authors such as Philip K. Dick have demonstrated. C.S.A., directed by University of Kansas film professor Kevin Willmott, describes one man's view of how history might have progressed had the Confederacy been victorious in the American Civil War and, aping the style of prolific documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, does so largely successfully.
(04/13/06 5:00am)
No local issue is more pressing to students than the long-running spat between the University and our surrounding community. Originally, the area of disagreement was raucous partying; now, while that issue remains, Spring Fair hangs in the balance and all of it points to a deeper strain of mutual dissatisfaction. In the blue corner are students advocating for the specific interests of their peers, and in the red corner is Mary Pat Clarke, City Councilwoman for Baltimore's 14th District.