Reading through the heat
The brain, like any other muscle, requires toning, exercise and training. Though we wouldn’t like to admit it, watching Shark Week isn’t the way to do it.
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The brain, like any other muscle, requires toning, exercise and training. Though we wouldn’t like to admit it, watching Shark Week isn’t the way to do it.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>British comedian and political satirist John Oliver has added himself to the line up of late-night show hosts. After leaving “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” where he hosted last summer during Stewart’s absence, Oliver has started his own work with “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.”While adding more criticism of news media and politics to the scope, Oliver seems to have simply replicated in the mold of talk shows. Advertising itself as a weekly show that covers the relevant topics of the previous week, “Last Week Tonight” premiered April 27 on HBO. The network, known for no filters and good old-fashioned political mockery, has not failed the new host in devolving in a show of criticism. Through a quick 30-minute session, Oliver pointed out the flaws of the news media’s coverage of India’s upcoming election, made a crack at the misleading advertisements of food companies and interviewed the former NSA director Keith Alexander. Though the sarcasm is enough to make any cynic happy, Oliver fails to bring anything new to the table. His style definitely resembles that of Jon Stewart’s, and while it’s disappointing to not see fresh material, hope still remains for this newbie. He appears to be more interactive with the audience but also searches for the same viewers of “The Daily Show.” Hopefully, his younger age will bring with it a closer connection to the youth of talk show audiences.Dialogue between Oliver and HBO programming president Michael Lombardo has suggested that the half-hour show may be extended to a full hour and air more often than Sunday night. The nature of this idea seems to be that HBO just wants Oliver to get his feet wet before fully launching him into the big leagues. If you’re looking for a weekly dose of sarcasm and criticism of the failures of America’s media and political system, this show is for you. But don’t expect anything special, as Oliver still needs to work out his performance’s kinks and could turn it into something else entirely.Oliver’s previous works don’t go unnoticed, like his part in NBC’s “Community,” and he honestly pulls out a good amount of jokes. But humor we’ve all seen before isn’t going to cut it, and Oliver must truly think about “reinvention” if he wants to make this work.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Two IU students from the West Tower Comedy group created a web series based on college life that recently premiered on YouTube.Sophomore Amy Corson and freshman Maggie Scudder combined their talents to create the web series.“It’s like a really short TV show, basically,” Corson said.Scudder, who in the past two years began to think of comedy as a career, said she and Corson wanted to create content online after first working together in a comedy group. “Why put off till tomorrow what you can do today?” Scudder said.As actors in the web series, Scudder and Corson said they’ve created caricatured versions of themselves who interact with fellow comedic friend Chris Diehn. “It’s kind of an awkward, quirky little web series about college life,” Scudder said. Scudder said college students are the intended audience.“We hope they can watch it and relate to all the uncomfortableness that’s involved with kind of being at this age and the social standards that we have to uphold as college students,” Scudder said.Corson started theater in high school and carried her work in drama into college. As a fan of Monty Python and “Saturday Night Live,” she said her enjoyment of shows transitioned into something she could see herself doing professionally.“It’s kind of like trying a bunch of different styles of theater and finding out what I liked,” Corson said.Scudder said she’s been interested in comedy for a while, and upon coming to IU, she started more practical, on-the-job work. She said writing sketches and performing improv led her to the web series.“It just seemed like the next step to start writing a show,” she said. In working with a friend, Corson said she believed one of the important things is the capability of dividing time with them.She said she has an honest relationship with Scudder, and it’s good to have friends who are supportive but always encouraging you to do your best. “We keep our professional relationship very separate from our personal relationship, and that’s what’s making it really easy to do this,” Corson said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>While the temperature might drop into the negatives during Minnesota winters, the new TV series “Fargo” blazes hot. A spinoff of the 1996 movie of the same name, “Fargo” tells a tale of small town living where the people aren’t all they appear to be. However, no prior knowledge is necessary to enjoy the show.“Fargo” begins in the middle of a Minnesota highway. A man drives slowly through a storm in a beat-up Sedan. A deer darts across the road, startling the driver. He swerves, but another leaps in front of him, throttling the car to the snowy banks. As the driver cradles his injured head, another man emerges from the trunk wearing nothing but a pair of boxers and darts into the woods. Lester Nygaard (Martin Freeman), a failing insurance salesman, represents the hallmark of mediocre living. Passing day to day in the shadow of his younger brother, Lester struggles with his wife, family and even an old high school bully reminding him of his miniscule existence. After an intimidating spat with his teenage nemesis Sam Less, Lester lands in the hospital, where he meets a peculiar stranger. This nomad is the driver from the earlier scene, Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), who takes interest in Lester’s pitiful life and suggests he get even with Sam. Seeing Lester’s timidity at the thought of murder, Lorne asks if his own abilities would be of service. When Sam shows up dead, Lester must scramble to make sense of the crime while local police hunt for the offender.Though small town murder may be easy enough to understand, the characters remain a little more complex. Thornton provides an eerie intelligence to Lorne to the point that the character seems like a prophet of violence and chaos. Lorne’s intimidating demeanor does not stem from a hulking figure or someone with firepower, but from the image he projects of a man who follows only the code of his own natural law. Abiding no other rules but his own, Lorne becomes the sinister image of wanderers after dark. Freeman keeps the worminess to Lester’s character while maintaining a level of rage under the radar. Even Allison Tolman provides warmth to the show by playing upbeat deputy Molly Solverson, a woman eager to solve crime and abide by her chief. Her character shadows the lead in the movie “Fargo,” Chief Marge Gunderson.Whatever it is that you think you know about the life of intricate small towns and friendly Midwesterners, “Fargo” will make you think twice. Let’s hope the series will strike an interest with young viewers and bring them to watch the 1996 classic — or at least give people a few pointers on their Minnesotan imitations.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>“Silicon Valley,” a new show that premiered April 6 on HBO, has worked its claws into raunchy humor and technological reign. We’re introduced to the main character Richard Hendrix (Thomas Middleditch) at a “ragger” with his friends, where a performing Kid Rock is said to be the poorest rich man at the party. While working for a tech company Hooli and living out of an “incubator,” Richard develops a compression algorithm for his website Pied Piper. The idea of the site, an application that allows musicians to check if their work infringes on any copyrights, seems inferior, but the algorithm is something everyone wants. Each of Richard’s friends struggles with a level of anti-socialism outside the realm of code that’s tough to beat. Richard becomes laughable in his awkward wardrobe of skinny khakis and hoodies over collared shirts. His inability to combat his timidity stands as the focal point of the character who needs to step up in order to start his company. Commander of the incubator Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller) provides the party humor of “Silicon Valley.” His stoner-attitude familiarity creates the hallmark of all the dilemmas of being young: to work or to party? Elrich’s smugness despite achieving particularly nothing provides him with a king of the nerds position. The rest of the men of Elrich’s incubator consist of Big Head, your run-of-the-mill coder, Dinesh, almost a carbon copy of “The Big Bang Theory’s” Raj, and Gilfoyle, a Satanic programmer. This band of misfits works to help Richard start Pied Piper from the ground up. While the humor remains upbeat, some holes in the system remain. The lack of named women in the show — despite a entrepreneur’s assistant and a stripper — can potentially harm the possibility of a female audience and, to say the least, is horrifying. Though the show would make you think there are fewer women per square foot in Silicon Valley than men, the real region’s population is split in half.As expected, the men of the tech world assume there’s simply no place for noteworthy women in these stories. Hopefully as the series pans out, more females will be added to the cast, but chances are slim.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Throughout a lapse of several different time lines, the Grand Budapest Hotel is shown in its original state, in its prime and on its last leg. The film opens with a young girl walking through a cemetery lightly covered with a fresh batch of snow. She approaches a memorial tomb covered in keys and letters of the fictitious author of a memoir entitled “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” This writer — played by Tom Wilkinson as an old man and Jude Law as a young man — creates an almost-bibliography of Zero, the lobby boy played by Tony Revolori, and how he happens upon ownership of the hotel. Viewers might become fond of Zero throughout the film as he pencils on a thin, fake mustache and falls in love with a mysterious baker’s assistant, Agatha, portrayed by Saoirse Ronan. His mentor and concierge of the hotel, Monsieur Gustave — played by Ralph Fiennes — provides much of the comic relief in the film from his grandeur nature, his drive to be proper with a capital P and his infatuation with wealthy older female guests of the hotel. After his favorite seasoned lady, Madame D. (Tilda Swinton), succumbs to a tragic death, Gustave is accused of murdering her for her fortune. The bratty gang of Madame D.’s kin is run by Dmitri (Adrien Brody), the eldest son who dons a dictator’s wardrobe and a jaguar’s ferocity. After Gustave receives a priceless work of art, “Boy with Apple,” from Madame D.’s will, Dmitri demands his imprisonment. With the assistance of Zero, Gustave steals “Boy with Apple” and attempts to evade Dmitri and his posse.If you’re hoping to find the same aura of cuteness from “Moonrise Kingdom” in this R-rated film, think again. Though the aloofness of an indie film remains, as does director Wes Anderson’s stamp all over the work, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” pokes fun at darker subjects, such as ridiculous murder scenes, cruelty towards immigrants and homage to World War II. These real-life issues translate better to an adult audience, and the use of precise profanity acts as a cherry on top of a grown-up sundae. Though the story should be entertaining enough for most, the art of Anderson’s cinematography and intricate design of each scene captivate even the novices of indie film. For each wide shot of the hotel, a handcrafted miniature model was used instead of CGI or other effects. If neither of those elements strike your fancy, the film remains quite fun to watch with IMDb pulled up to see if you can recognize headliner actors playing small parts. Scenes introducing actors like Bill Murray, Owen Wilson and Edward Norton in minor roles serve as an inside joke for the audience.With its quirks and intricacies fashioned into a tale of riches and murder, “The Grand Budapest Hotel” puts on a grand performance and leaves audience members happy they visited.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>IU Cinema is screening films this month to remember the almost one million people killed in Rwanda during its 1994 genocide.This April marks the 20th anniversary of the genocide.In remembrance of the tragedy, IU student organization the Books & Beyond Project and the Global Village Living-Learning Center teamed up with IU Cinema to screen a film series including films “Sometimes in April,” showing today, “As We Forgive,” on April 8 and “Africa United,” on April 22. All showings start at 7 p.m.Dr. Jeffrey D. Holdeman, the director of the Global Village Living-Learning Center, said he believed a film series would visually educate students about the Rwandan Genocide, the aftermath and the impact Books & Beyond has on current Rwandan students.Students involved with Books & Beyond work with students from a TEAM Charter School in Newark, N.J., and Rwanda’s Kabwende Primary School to write children’s short stories.In its sixth year of operation, the organization produced about 2,000 student-authored books to increase the literacy rate of children in Rwanda and promote education.Junior Emily Beeson, the treasurer of Books & Beyond, joined the group for its local, national and international impact.“I wanted my college experience to be present on campus, but at the same time, there’s a world outside of college, outside of IU that I really wanted to be in touch with,” Beeson said. Holdeman said he wishes for students to establish a connection to the genocide past the confinements of the classroom.“We spend so much time reading textbooks and articles in our classes and that distance that’s created between the person who wrote it and the electronics it’s printed on and you are sitting in a coffee shop reading it or in class and discussing it, there’s so much distance there,” he said. Beeson said students who come to watch the film series should view the movies with an open mind on a dark topic.At the end of each film, Holdeman said specialists have been asked to come present a talk back session where questions will be answered, discussions started and resources shared.He said in Rwanda, impediments on speech about the genocide in political, legal and sociocultural laws prevent a dialogue from occurring.“You have this very moving experience, and you can’t just have an open conversation about what happened,” Holdeman said. “The film series allows us to have some of a discussion, allows for people to have a way of learning more and having a starting place.”
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Vendors, teachers, quilters and visitors returned to Bloomington this weekend for the 23rd annual Indiana Heritage Quilt Show. Quilts entered in the show were hung on display for judges and guests to view Thursday through Saturday at the Bloomington Convention Center. Volunteers stood at their posts throughout the building next to quilts in categories of pieced, appliqué, youth quilters and art.One volunteer, Dawna Petersen, returned to the quilt show after a long hiatus. Petersen said she mostly admires the works at the show, but she has made a couple of quilts herself. “I sometimes add some quilting to something else I’m doing, but I don’t do full quilts,” she said.Petersen said she is a textile and tactile person who enjoys the eye candy of quilts. She said as a woman who’s sewn for a great deal of her life, her favorite part of the show was talking to visitors who were admiring the works on display. “When I wander through alone, it’s probably trying to deconstruct designs, figuring out how to the pieces went together,” she said. Petersen said though choosing a favorite quilt among the entries was too difficult a task for her, art quilts are her favorite. Another volunteer, Danielle Abplanalp, rejoined the task force at the quilt show for her third year.She said her mother, an avid quilter of 25 years, got her into the craft. Abplanalp said she considers herself a novice.“I started basically quilting baby quilts for friends,” she said. “Everyone seemed to be having babies at the same time, so I started making quilts.”Abplanalp said she suggests to other newbies like herself to work through the difficulties of finding quality materials, thread, learning equipment and basic techniques. She said it is necessary to work through the basics in order to reach the enjoyable aspect of quilting.“A lot of it you can get from books and people that you know, and if you join a quilt guild, you have a whole bunch of people to talk to about it,” she said. Alplanalp also said she encourages people who might be intimidated by the craft to start small and to be content with making mistakes. “You don’t get to the level of this quality overnight,” she said, waving her hand at a first place appliqué quilt behind her. “It’s just a matter of having fun, enjoying the colors and the process.”Alpanalp said she believed the Bloomington quilt show revealed heavily artistic quilts more than most venues.“There’s not as many traditional style quilts in this show versus other ones where they have a lot more simple patterns,” she said. “This is much more artistic.”Petersen said she also noticed a difference in Bloomington’s quilt festivities in terms of traditional design. She said there seemed to be a push for more machine quilting and a change in the applicants of Bloomington’s show.“When I volunteered before, the show was pretty new in Bloomington and most of the entries were from the area, so it’s got a much broader geographical scope,” Petersen said. “Now there are quilts here from all over the country.”While observing visitors and receiving feedback from them, Petersen said she wanted others to come to the show for inspiration rather than comparison.“I’ve heard a lot of people say today, ‘Oh, what I do just isn’t anything like this,’ but what they do is about them,” she said. “We’ve all got gifts to give and they are different.”Alpanalp said she wanted the volunteers, entries and organizers of the show to encourage those around them.“Even if you’re not going to do quilting, it’s a great place just to see colors and get any kind of artistic direction,” she said.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The annual Indiana Heritage Quilt Show will return today through March 8 to Bloomington for the 23rd time. With more than $12,000 in prize money, competing quilters will display their works to the public and selected judges from the National Quilting Association. Starting in Columbus, Ind., the show made a move to Bloomington because of a lack of space for events. In the downtown area, more than 200 quilts will be shown in the Bloomington Convention Center and expanded vender booths. Co-chair and judging chair member Jane Pitt said she urges all types of observers to visit this display of textile artistry. “We encourage tradition and innovation,” she said. From young quilters joining the ranks in a ribbon-only category to contestants well into their senior years, there is a wide age range in participants. One of the youngest competitors in the youth category is a 14-year-old girl in her fourth year of entering a quilt in the show. Young quilters are evaluated on their pieces and receive critical feedback in order to perfect their novice skills, she said. Pitt said she wishes to inspire young people to take up quilting, and hopes they see something at the show that appeals to them.“Something that might encourage younger people to take a second look, and think, ‘You know, this isn’t just something that Grandma does,’” she said.Sewing work isn’t exclusive to women. Pitt said. Though men certainly remain the minority in craftwork, she personally has seen more join the practice of quilting. “(Male quilters) seem to be on the rise,” she said. “In fact, one of the judges for our show is a male, and he is a quilter himself.” Workshops lead by seven nationally-recognized teachers and other quilters will take place throughout the quilt show to teach skills and different techniques of the craft. Pitt said needles and thread aren’t the only elements being taught to crafters. A class with painting elements will be taught as well. “Next year there will be another selection of teachers giving workshops, so there’s an opportunity to learn basics as well as more specialized techniques,” Pitt said. The quilt show upholds conventional values of quilting and encourages a recollection of the traditional quilt on the observer, Pitt said. She said the quilts displayed have shifted in purposes of warmth and comfort to tread new ground in art. Pieces depicting social and political statements have appeared in past shows. “There is a huge diversity in the quilting styles,” Pitt said. “We have everything from the most traditional American in style, basic sleep-under quilt, to just, works of art.” Co-chair Sue McDaniel said she’s seen an artistic turn in the practice of quilt making. She said there’s been a shift in the practice to an art medium rather than the traditional use of necessity in the quilt. “Quilts today are not your grandmother’s quilts,” McDaniel said. Because of the expansion in artistic expression, categories for competition quilts have grown, she said. McDaniel said the classes span fairly to allow different types of works into entry. “We have several different categories, if it’s a piece versus an appliqué versus an art quilt,” she said. “There’s also categories for the size. Techniques are very wide open.”Though a niche area of craft expertise might seem intimidating to some, Pitt said there’s a little bit of everything for everyone at the quilt show. “Everyone should come and enjoy the show,” McDaniel said. “Because anyone who enjoys art would appreciate the quilts.“