Author: jal060

By Michelle Joline

Writer

The holidays are perfect for catching up with family and friends from home, but also for updating your wardrobe. Even though December and January are intended for mittens, scarves and sweaters, our favorite stores still change their inventory from ski chic to resort wear. So, while it is too cold to not wear a puffy coat, we can peruse the Internet for the perfect pair of strappy sandals and pastel nail polish.

Here are some of the trends on the rise in 2012, just in time for you to decide what your next wardrobe staple will be.

Like many of the past warm weather seasons, the spring 2012 runways are stocked with various pastels. This color trend can be spotted on everything from dresses and skirts to coats, bags, nails and jeans. These splashes of color are perfect for the warm weather I’m sure we all are pining for.

Pastel colors can also be seen on one of spring’s other trends, the wedge. Girls are daring to go sky-high in platforms and wedges that are currently making a comeback. In addition to pastels, warm brown leather hues continue to be a perfect and flexible choice.

Color blocks are also a big trend on the spring runways. This revisited look makes for a great addition to an updated wardrobe. If you are only looking to be slightly adventurous with the new trends, try a color block handbag. It is a great way to enhance your entire outfit. Tangerine is a very popular color for the color block look. There is a pop of tangerine everywhere this spring, adding a hint of life to cream colors and muted tones.

Another statement can be found in polka dots and geometric patterns. This new look brings “mod” back to this season’s fashion trends. Celebrities like Emma Stone have been spotted wearing this look, so don’t hesitate to try it out before the warm weather finally hits Lewisburg. Go with a little frock, mod or drop-waist dress, and you’ll encompass more than one of this season’s best looks all in one outfit.

So, while the cold weather may be bringing you down, look forward to the sunny weather and start thinking about how you are going to make your statement this spring on campus. 

By Carolyn Williams

Writer

David Fincher’s new adaptation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” quickly became a major hit this holiday season. “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is the first book in Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy that completely captured the attention of its worldwide audience. One of its taglines, “the feel-bad movie of Christmas,” sums it up well. This film is not for the faint of heart.

Rooney Mara (“The Social Network”) steals the show as the film’s eponymous heroine, Lisbeth Salander, while Daniel Craig (“Casino Royale,” “Quantum of Solace”) takes a break from espionage to back her up as mild-mannered journalist Mikael Blomkvist. The two spend the first hour of the movie living independent of one another, but when their paths inevitably intersect, the result is explosive.

Lisbeth, a taciturn, computer-hacking genius with a bad attitude, negligible social skills and a slightly shady job as a private researcher, is, among other things, a ward of the state. Her old, beloved guardian suffers a heart attack and she abruptly finds herself placed under the eye of Nils Bjurman, who proceeds to curb her independence and ultimately rape her. Lisbeth is no wilting flower, however, and she strikes back with calculated vengeance, brutally exacting her revenge in the manner her unique moral code dictates.

Meanwhile, Blomkvist finds himself financially insoluble after trying to take down mobster Hans-Erik Wennerström, and is coerced into taking on a private investigation from aged business mogul Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer “The Last Station,” “Beginners”). For months, Blomkvist is entertained on the desolately beautiful island belonging to the sprawling Vanger clan. Most notable among this pool of suspects is Martin Vanger (Stellan Skarsgård, “Mama Mia,” “Good Will Hunting”), who succeeded Henrik as CEO of the family business and successfully personifies Larsson’s character’s chillingly cool composure.

Blomkvist and Salander’s paths coincide when he finds a lead in the long-cold investigation and needs the help of a research assistant. This is where things become interesting; Fincher capitalizes on every one of Larsson’s nerve-wracking plot twists and suspenseful moments, making the three-hour movie seem much shorter.

Filmgoers should not take this R rating lightly, as scenes of graphic violence play heavily throughout. Yet despite its violence, “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” is a genuinely powerful film, with Mara already nominated for a Golden Globe.

While it seems as if half the world has already read the book, Fincher’s film manages to scare us all over again, and in the best possible way. “‘The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo’ was a great, action-packed, unpredictable movie. I definitely recommend it,” Lauren DelloStritto ’14 said. Whether you know what’s going to happen between Mara and the irreproachable Craig or not, this heart-stopping and well-executed thriller is not to be missed.

By Carolyn Williams

Staff Writer

Nicole Krauss impressed critics with the joyful energy she brought to the tragedy of her first novel, “The History of Love,” and now, with her latest book “Great House” she has achieved another triumph with an even sadder story.

The narration takes place in parts, the connections between them unraveling beautifully as the novel progresses. Quickly apparent, their most concrete tie becomes symbolized through a monstrous writing desk, possessed of nineteen drawers in total, one of them permanently locked.

We first meet Nadia, an introverted, New York-based writer who was custodian of the desk from her mid-twenties until her late-forties. Her narration is addressed to “Your honor,” although who that could be remains unknown. Given to her for temporary safekeeping by a friend of a friend, a Chilean poet named Daniel Varsky, the desk remains with Nadia through the intervening years after Varsky’s death at the hands of Pinochet’s police. Though she knows the desk is not permanently hers, Nadia writes each of her novels at the desk. When a young woman arrives, claiming it as her inheritance from her late father, Nadia’s life as she knows it is derailed.

The story then gains the interest of an Israeli man named Aaron devastated by the recent loss of his wife. He addresses his younger son, Dov, whom he has never been able to understand. The boy aspired to be a writer once, but abandoned the idea after it was shot down by his father. He instead decided to move to London, detaching from his family and only returning in time for his mother’s funeral. Aaron’s simultaneous rage and love, so powerful and so deeply felt in Krauss’s writing, bewilder him as he recalls his son’s whole life, retracing his steps, trying to figure out what he did wrong.

A refined professor of Romantic literature at Oxford relates the story of his wife, a writer named Lotte Berg, who for many years worked at a desk that terrified and disturbed him. A refugee from Nazi Germany, Lotte escaped but lost her entire family in the camps. Her husband always assumed it was this survivor’s guilt which underscored the secrecy between them throughout their married life. An envelope found at her writing desk reveals that nightmares of the Holocaust were not the only secret Lotte had kept.

A young American named Izzy, also studying at Oxford, tells of how, after encountering writer’s block in her graduate studies, she meets a pair of Israeli siblings, Yoav and Leah. They live in a house full of furniture belonging to their father, a renowned antiques dealer. The strange pair accept her into their lives, and though she falls in love with the brother, the lovers are ultimately separated by the sibling’s relationship to their controlling father, whose life goal has been to perfectly restore his own father’s office, ruthlessly tracking down each article looted from his childhood home during the Holocaust.

Though perhaps a slow start, “Great House” quickly becomes hard to put down. As the connections between the stories grow less opaque, the more Krauss’s characters and their individual (and shared) plights endear themselves to their readers, and the more we don’t want it to end. “Great House” is an elegantly crafted, serious novel and an exposing, thought-provoking read.