Oct. 05, 2009 Hot rollers - 'Whip It' throws elbows at the cookie-cutter teen movie
by Lia Karidas

Drew Barrymore's directorial debut in 'Whip It' was something I had been both anticipating and dreading for a while. Barrymore's comedic timing, girl-next-door vibe, and relatable nuances have made her one of my favourite actresses. I was less sure of her directing abilities.

With those doubts dangling above my head, I went to see a movie about roller derby on its opening night. I also happened to be in the same audience as the Thames Fatales – London's own derby girls. It was not a day I thought would come, but to be honest, I'm happy that it did.

The movie stars Ellen Page (Juno) as an unmotivated Texas teen, Bliss Cavendar. Bliss is lost in translation within the not-so-bustling town of Bodeen, Texas. She finds refuge and a new sense of self as a member of the Hurl Scouts – a rough-and-tumble roller derby team stationed in nearby Austin.

Roller derby is a full-contact women's sport played on a track while wearing four-wheel roller skates. There are slutty costumes and fishnet stockings involved (good to have your attention, boys).

The plot line itself reads like many teen, team and sports films. With some realistic touches here and there, what might have been a cookie-cutter coming of age plot became a touching story about discovering one’s passion.

Page does a great job playing up the lovable awkwardness of a teenager who is trying to find herself, but she isn't a caricature. Her rough-around-the-edges nature doesn't stem from a desire to rebel, but rather...

read the full article >>

Oct. 05, 2009 Scribblenauts - My New Electronic Addiction
by Andrew Genereaux

Ok, so I heard about this game in the realms of Nerdom that apparently let you use whatever items your little mind can think of to solve puzzles. My first thought was to find out if I had been drinking; after concluding that I hadn’t been my next thought was to try this game and see if what I had read was true. So I tracked down a copy of Scribblenauts, vowing that if said game turned out to be horrible I’d declare a nerdy war on whoever told me it was great. With the game in my Nintendo DS, I eagerly waited to jump into the game... well to make a long story, short the nerdy war never materialized. The promise of solving puzzles with any item you can think of is, well, true. Aside from the lack of copyrighted materials (for obvious reasons), you can bring anything you can think of into the game. This is what makes the game so great, using your Scribblenauts (yes that’s right the characters and game have the same name) and whatever items you can think of you must figure out how to get your Scribblenauts to the objective (aka a starite). So yes, after spending an hour trying to figure out how to get past the shark without killing it (I was trying to get the no weapon award), I did what any desperate person would do... I asked god for help. Well, as luck would have it, god decided to clear his schedule, diving into the water and beating that shark to death. Delighted that he was a vengeful god I dove into the water, summoned a scuba suit and swam to the starite. I was sold on...

read the full article >>

Sep. 24, 2009 American League East Preview
by Ryan Campbell

This off-season has been quite tumultuous in Major League Baseball, with several marquee free agents still available due to the sluggish economy. However, one team didn’t hold back. Unhappy with missing the playoffs for the first time since 1994, the Yankees spent $423.5 million on big ticket free agents. Let’s take a look at how these changes will affect the AL East this coming season.

1. Boston Red Sox (’08 finish – 2nd)
While the Yankees got all the media attention this offseason, the Red Sox made some excellent pick-ups as well. They signed 2006 all-star game starting pitcher Brad Penny for $5 million, former Dodgers closer Takashi Saito for $2.5 million, and first ballot Hall of Famer John Smoltz for $5.5 million. These players will have as big of an impact as the Yankees signings at a fraction of the cost, and help propel the Red Sox to their sixth playoff appearance in seven years.

2. New York Yankees (’08 Finish – 3rd)
As much as I have criticized the dollar amount the Yankees spent on free agents CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and AJ Burnett, I will not poke fun at their talent. Teixeira will be a huge improvement at first base over Jason Giambi, while Sabathia and Burnett will fill the voids in the starting rotation that Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy failed to. While this won’t be enough for them to leapfrog the talented roster assembled by Red Sox GM Theo Epstein, it will be enough to squeak by Tampa Bay and back into the postseason.

3. Tampa Bay Rays (’08...

read the full article >>

Sep. 24, 2009 Marketing YOU™ : How to Land your Dream Job
by Emily Hiltz

Snagging your ultimate career means letting you shine through. Emily Hiltz has the job-savvy tips every student should know.

Face up on Facebook
Turn the tables on job recruiters with your own Facebook advertisement. Over 110-million site users could look at your ad, including employers from leading corporations. Want to work for Disney? How about IBM? Say so in your personalized ad and attract recruiters’ attention. Beyond targeting employers, your ad opens the door to a valuable resource: the ability to network with others within your industry of interest.

Do more than you bargained for
Look for opportunities to help people out. Helping a “friend of a friend” with a project builds a relationship that could come in handy down the road. Expanding your network means more opportunity to be referred to potential employers. Showing interest in others indicates you’re curious and helpful – both admirable qualities employers look for. Plus, getting involved in lots of projects ups the ante to discover a career path you might not have thought of yet.

Become current
Read up on news events, watch TV, explore the Web, and most importantly, have conversations. Be aware of global and local trends that influence job sectors. Being able to keep up a conversation on a wide range of topics works wonders in interviews. Employers often ask broad questions that are designed to test your personality, interests, and well-roundedness, so be ahead of the game!

Intern (and do more...

read the full article >>

Sep. 24, 2009 Is there such thing as a “Low-Fat Latte”? How your Latte could be trimming more then just your waistline…
by Sarah McCain

Latte - $3.25
Muffin - $1.50
Tabloid Magazine - $4.50
Bottled Water - $3.50
Soda - $2.00
Daily Newspaper - $3.00

TOTAL - $17.75

You are probably wondering what the above list implies, and more importantly, why you should be interested in it. The answer is simple, and it could end up saving you a whole lot of money.

Take a moment and think about each of the items listed above. Do you purchase any of them and if so, how often, and in what quantity? The average individual spends about $5 daily on items like the ones found above. These purchases may seem like nothing, a few dollars here and there, yet these so-called “small purchases” are actually costing us more than we realize. Multiply these $2.00 purchases by a weekly or even monthly basis and you’d be shocked at the total. Looking at the actually numbers, it suddenly seems that the daily latte you thought was only a few bucks is more like a few hundred bucks. Welcome to what is known as the “Latte Factor” a phrase used to denote excessive spending, mainly in the form of “extra” goods, like those listed above.

Believe it or not, this expression is not just common-speak. A financial analyst, David Bach coined it in his book, “Start Late, Finish Rich.” He believes understanding the “Latte Factor” has potential to help consumers save money.

Surprised? Realistically, in the busy day-to-day scheme of things, coffee just doesn’t register as an expensive purchase. And most of us are not likely to throw up our...

read the full article >>

Sep. 24, 2009 The Money They Don’t Want You to Have: What has the government really done for me?
by Vanessa Baudner

Have you ever found yourself wondering – how can I milk the government for some more cash?

Well, education is one of Canada’s biggest industries - without really thinking about school in this light (as a corporation). It seems that sometimes as students that we forget that we are in fact, a very privileged group of people in our country who should be reaping all the benefits of the education corporate body. I mean sure we can complain that we’re not receiving enough and that things could be better, but on the other hand things could be a lot worse. If you take the time to look into some of the programs offered for financial aid you will see that the government isn’t trying to keep money from us – they want students to have it! That’s why it’s there…

As university students under federal (national) jurisdiction and provincial (local) jurisdiction we get to experience a higher level of e ducation along with benefits that not all enrolled students recognize and most may not even know about. Hopefully by the end of this article you will see why being a university student in Ontario has more perks than you think.

Right here at the University of Western Ontario there are some fabulous features attributed to none other than the provincial government and our University Student’s Council. Student health benefits are another great aspect of our lives as students. Maybe some of us are covered by our parents health care plan but take for example the USC health plan here at...

read the full article >>

Sep. 24, 2009 Wasted
by Emily Vella

After three too many glasses of homemade wine, Jenna stumbled as gracefully as possible across Steve’s bachelor apartment to the washroom. One day, men would take her out to restaurants where reservations were necessary and a bottle of wine cost as much as a week’s worth of groceries. But, until she graduated, a night in with cheap wine and The Newsroom was about all she could hope for. She could have met those men, but she was sure she had more in common with the ones she saw in lectures every day. She had met Steve last year in her fourth year T.S. Eliot seminar. Somehow, in four years of undergrad English she hadn’t studied him at all, and thought the seminar would be a good way to find out what she was missing. She hadn’t missed much. And while she had enjoyed The Waste Land, the seminar itself reminded her of a circle jerk. It wasn’t just that she was the only girl in the course (although she realized then why her female friends had told her to take the Virginia Woolf seminar instead). No, it was the embarrassing idolization of a dead white man who, with the help of another dead white man, had produced some interesting poetry/footnotes. Whenever she happened to disagree with her professor about the sheer genius of a particular line or phrase, she was met with a cold stare from ‘Eliot’s Disciples’. Clearly, a woman could not possibly comprehend Eliot’s complicated male psyche and should not embarrass herself by letting on that she didn’t understand. Thankfully, on...

read the full article >>

Sep. 22, 2009 Behind the Disney Magic
by Rebecca Rallo

Walt Disney is a name that is known around the world for bringing joy and fond memories, in the form of animated fairytales, to generation after generation of moviegoers. Disney established himself in 1924 with his first full-fledged series of animated shorts entitled the “Alice Comedies.” Since then, the Disney Empire has created hundreds of movies, and is credited with establishing such techniques as the multi-plane camera and Technicolor in animation. Disney himself has been heralded as a creative genius and pioneer in the field of animated cinema.

Behind all of the glamour and enchantment, however, lies the third largest media conglomerate in the world, owning everything from movie production companies, to sports teams, to consumer merchandise, to their own official Disney town. The Disney Company does a very good job of concealing the amount of power it yields in the media industry, which allows it to engage in such practices as cross-promotion. For example, Disney will promote one of its upcoming blockbusters across all of the various media outlets that it owns, and since people are unaware that Disney owns all of these outlets, they will assume that the movie must be good since they are seeing advertisements for it everywhere. In this sense, Disney tricks consumers into further supporting and contributing to the Disney media empire.

In addition to this sense of dishonesty, massive media conglomeration poses a danger to smaller media companies, threatening...

read the full article >>

Sep. 22, 2009 Wasted Potential and Poor Decisions Plague Max Payne
by Luke Bainbridge

As a gamer I am continually getting my hopes up for the numerous game to movie adaptations, only to find them dashed soon after their release. The latest in this category, John Moore’s Max Payne, has sadly proven to be no exception. Max Payne follows the story of a New York detective seeking revenge for the murder of his wife and child. It is a dark police drama, but rarely rises up to the lofty expectations of avid gamers everywhere. Before going any further, I must state that I am not one of those fanatical gaming zealot who thinks that if you are going to grace us with a movie adaptation it dare not stray, even the slightest, from the source material. In fact, most games have awful stories whose only purpose seems to be the facilitation of gameplay. The problem is that Max Payne (the videogame) was a shining example of how mixing atmosphere, gameplay, and an actually pretty awesome story can create a truly unique experience. I am not saying that a movie entirely about diving down hallways and shooting guns in slow-motion would be good (although those are the high points here), but there was plenty of source material to pull from and the movie seemed far too fixated on only one piece of the puzzle. Combined with poor dialogue, bad casting choices and some incomprehensible plot twists, and you have a recipe for disaster.

The movie opens on our hero (the one and only Max Payne) struggling to keep his head above water in an icy river, but eventually being sucked...

read the full article >>