Category: Review

“Premium Rush” deemed a typical action movie with an engaging cast

Post author By cmo015
Post date September 25, 2012

Carolyn Williams
Writer

“Premium Rush” is director/screenwriter David Koepp’s latest, end-of-summer, adrenaline-inducing, action thriller starring New York City bike messengers as unsung heroes locked in a classic struggle of good versus evil. But really, that’s pretty much the gist.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt stars as Wilee, an Ivy League law school grad who is putting his diploma to good use by delivering messages up and down the city as a bike messenger. This character, though perfectly likable, has a death wish; here he is whipping along lanes of traffic all day, on a bike with no gears or brakes. He and his girlfriend, Vanessa (Dania Ramirez), and their goofy sidekick of sorts (Wole Parks) are portrayed here as enlightened anti-corporate thrill-seekers. They are called to the siren song of high speed cycling through obstacles and thinking their way around corners, all while engaging in friendly banter and/or casual lovers’ spats, until the plot intervenes.

A dirty cop named Detective Monday (Michael Shannon) has a little bit of a gambling problem, and things go from bad to worse. After taking a beating from some Asian toughs for coming up short, he receives a tip about a sure way to make up his end of the bargain by the appointed time, if he’s willing to bend the law a little bit and intercept a package on its way to Chinatown.

Enter Nima (Jamie Chung), Vanessa’s roommate, who has gotten mixed up in some kind of dirty dealings in the Asian underworld. Don’t worry, we quickly learn the reason: she’s trying to bring her son into America after working three jobs for two years while attending Columbia to raise the money. She knows Wilee’s the best messenger in the biz, so she requests him to carry this sensitive package. He’s subsequently less than pleased to find himself being chased by Monday all over New York, but the truth of Nima’s package is revealed. Naturally, once they understand that they’re fighting for the “American Dream,” Wilee’s crew springs into action, leading to a series of dizzying bike chases and narrow escapes–a culminating and predictable ending for this sort of a movie.

“Premium Rush” isn’t a bad movie by any means. It has a good cast (with the exception of Shannon reprising his role as the crazy guy from “Revolutionary Road”, except it doesn’t make as much sense here) and a good director who knows what he’s doing as far as action movies go. If you’re looking for something deep, this isn’t it. Minimal character development and a general adherence to the action-film playbook hurt “Premium Rush,” even if it does have some excellent action scenes. Between “The Dark Knight Rises”, this weekend’s “Looper” and the upcoming biopic “Lincoln,” Gordon-Levitt clearly has been very busy, and though we’ll hope the next two films are better, “Premium Rush” will do for now.

Arts & Life Campus Events

Molly Miller ’14 joins Dena DeRose Trio in Jazz ensemble performance

Post author By cmo015
Post date September 19, 2012

Christina Oddo

Arts & Life Editor

Students and faculty gathered in the lobby of the Weis Center for the Performing Arts on Sept. 12 to experience a Dena DeRose Trio performance. Molly Miller ’14 had the opportunity to perform with the Trio at the event. This jazz ensemble performance was part of the Janet Weis Cabaret Jazz Series.

“I met Dena DeRose in her studio apartment in Long Island City almost 10 years ago,” Miller said. “After which, Dena became–and continues to be–my greatest musical inspiration. I used to listen to her albums every night while I fell asleep, and I carry the lessons that I’ve learned from her with me always.”

DeRose has performed at many legendary venues, including the Jazz Standard in New York, the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and the Jazz Showcase in Chicago.

“Dena DeRose was incredible!” Katie Wimmer ’15 said. “Her voice was smooth and a pleasure to listen to. Some of my favorite parts were the solos of the base and drums. But my favorite part of the performance was Molly. She has an incredible voice which rivals the main performer. After going to this concert, I am now a fan of jazz.”

For Miller, this was an unforgettable experience.

“I have never had more fun performing than I had last Wednesday night, singing with the Dena DeRose Trio,” Miller said. “Matt Wilson is one of the most enthusiastic and dynamic people I’ve ever met. I love working with Martin Wind for his sensitive touch and creative intuition. And of course, there’s Dena. I am so grateful not only for the time spent with Dena, Matt and Martin, but also for the incredible opportunity to share some of my favorite music with my friends at Bucknell. The Janet Weis Cabaret Series gave me the chance to integrate my collegiate life into my life outside of Bucknell.”

Arts & Life Books Review

“A Visit from the Goon Squad”; irresistibly modern and sarcastic

Post author By cmo015
Post date September 18, 2012

Carolyn Williams

Writer

Jennifer Egan’s fifth book, “A Visit from the Goon Squad,” has been met with overwhelmingly popular and critical approval, earning it last year’s Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Whether or not to call this work a novel or a collection of interrelated short stories is still up for debate among critics, but regardless of how she does it, Egan’s work here is engaging from start to finish.

Set largely in New York City, but also in a few different spots (California and Italy, to name a few), Egan relates a story of time and life set to the background of the music industry. Time is the eponymous “goon squad” as it shifts back and forth fluidly throughout the work, and it’s the story’s main impetus. Egan has said in interviews that her inspiration for the story was drawn from “The Sopranos” and Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” a bizarre combination that, weirdly enough, an informed reader can’t help but buy.

Summarizing is definitely difficult, as the 13 chapters can be read as individual works, set over 40 or so years. Characters move in and out of the work, sometimes playing leads, and other times unassuming supporting roles. Narrative privilege shifts, as does the style of writing. This is not a minimal change–we’re talking about first to second-person switches, a chapter communicated via PowerPoint slides and text-speak as a legitimate form of literature, perhaps suggesting this format as the new doublespeak (this particular chapter is set in an Orwellian New York future, after all).

We begin with the 30-something kleptomaniac Sasha who goes on a date with Alex. Alex later works for Bennie, who conveniently was Sasha’s former boss. Bennie himself was a shoddy bassist before getting into the music business and used to be married to Stephanie who works in PR. The connections go on and on. These are evolving and living characters, told sympathetically, but not to the point of sweetness; they’re trying, and sometimes failing, but that’s pretty typical, and Egan lets us choose whether or not they deserve the blame for their often laughably unexpected situations.

Egan’s greatest strength in “A Visit from the Goon Squad” is her ability to inject her delightfully barbed humor into her description and dialogue without seeming to try too hard. It’s sarcastic and modern, and, though it perhaps gets a little derailed towards the end, it keeps those pages irresistibly turning.

Arts & Life Campus Events

Shakespeare (abridged) will leave audience laughing

Post author By cmo015
Post date September 18, 2012

Molly Ford

A group of University students will perform the complete works of William Shakepeare in an unpredictable and hilarious single two-act and one hour-long production. “The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged),” directed by Adam Wennick ’13, will be this weekend, Sept. 22 and 23 at 8 p.m. This student-run performance is modeled after the work of a three-man comedy group, The Reduced Shakespeare Company.

Wennick, along with 10 actors, a lighting designer, a stage manager, two assistant stage managers, a props master and a lighting operator will take on the lofty challenge of putting a modern spin on Shakespeare’s classic works by combining Shakespearean and contemporary language and themes.

After a witty introduction, the actors portray the beloved “Romeo and Juliet” and immediately follow up with the less successful “Titus Andronicus” in the form of a cooking show. Wennick did not want to give too much away when asked about the performance.

“We lovingly parody all of [Shakespeare’s] works,” Wennick said. “I have been picking apart the script and loving it for the past year.”

Wennick’s inspiration came from taking Assistant Professor of Theatre and Dance Anjalee Hutchinson’s directing class. After the Theatre and Dance department decided to do the mainstage of “Macbeth,” Wennick thought it would be a good idea to do a whole Shakespeare season.

“I had trouble deciding exactly which show I wanted to do, so I thought, why not do them all?” Wennick said.

Wennick wants the audience to laugh harder than they ever have at a University performance. He is most excited for the second act and the audience’s reactions.

Tickets are $5 and can be purchased at the box office.

Arts & Life Campus Events

Molina-Guzman investigates “Latina y Latino” culture normatives re-defined by today’s media sources

Post author By jal060
Post date September 9, 2012

Jen Lassen

Arts & Life Editor

Media is a force not limited to words in a newspaper or images on a screen. It has the ability to pervade across cultures and backgrounds, portraying people differently than who they actually are and what they truly stand for. Knowing this, Dr. Isabel Molina-Guzman has uncovered the secrets of mass media and how different forms of media skew our perceptions of Latinos.

Molina-Guzman, a nationally recognized critic of Latinos in the media and author of the best-selling book “Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media,” gave a speech in the Traditional Reading Room of the Ellen Clarke Bertrand Library on Sept. 10 at 6 p.m. Her talk, entitled “Performing Latina Racial Flexibility in the ‘Post’ Media World,” focused on the portrayal of Latin American persons in the media through images, television shows, interviews and online content. She also focused on how these various mediums collectively paint inaccurate pictures of Latinos in a “post” world, one supposedly looking past racial differences and becoming more progressive as a population.

“We’re being told by politicians in media that race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality don’t matter or shouldn’t play a role in our policies. Reality is, we’re living in a United States that is increasingly diverse,” Molina-Guzman said.

Molina-Guzman pointed out how in the United States alone, Hispanic student enrollment has increased year after year. Connecting this to her points about globalization taking force in the United States, Molina-Guzman’s passion lies in critically analyzing values our culture assigns to ethnic and racial minorities.

“Media functions as a normalizing institution. This means that the media reinforces dominant normatives,” Molina-Guzman said.

Basing her presentation off of these “normatives” about Latinos already present in the United States and the stereotypes possibly associated with these people and/or their culture, Molina-Guzman focused on three case studies of Latina women to enforce her argument. These women included actress Sofia Vergara, singer and actress Jennifer Lopez and model and actress Zoe Saldana.

Molina-Guzman focused on how each woman was pressured to conform in different ways to the American normative for Latina women. For example, she highlighted how the pressures on reality television show “Modern Family” forced Vergara into the normative of a Latina “spitfire,” how relationships with white and black celebrities made Jennifer Lopez conform to different Latina racial connotations and how Saldana’s blackness as a Latina pressured her to fit into–and become defined by–a unique group of Hispanic women.

Her three case studies proved her point that media also constantly feels pressure to conform to a certain standard of normatives present in a country.

“Media is under a constant pressure to conform to the same model,” Molina-Guzman said.

Molina-Guzman also pointed out how there has been a significant increase in Latino actors in media overall. She also makes the point how the demand for these professionals has caused most of them to compromise their cultures for profitable gain.

“Media consumption is more partisan than ever before. This highly selective media consumption influences how we see the world,” Molina-Guzman said.

Students had differing reactions to Molina-Guzman’s speech.

“I disagreed with most of what [Molina-Guzman] talked about. We also need to consider other things like the creative team for a celebrity’s image versus just looking at the artist themselves,” Kiara Huertas ’14 said.

“I liked that Bucknell brought a speaker to talk about Latino culture and social problems. I thought that was very important,” Angel Hernandez ’13 said.

Molina-Guzman concluded by discussing how media portrayal of Latinos leaves us blind to how we should view the reality behind these cultures.

“The poverty levels [of Latino culture] in the United States are striking, and the reality of it all is hard to avoid,” Molina-Guzman said.

If there is one thing to take away from Molina-Guzman’s talk, it is that media has the striking power to distort and deceive.

“I argue that post-media and post-gender and post-ethnic notions matter in our ‘post-race,’ progressive world than ever before,” Molina-Guzman said.

Arts & Life Books Movies Review

“Safety Not Guaranteed” keeps audience guessing

Post author By jal060
Post date September 9, 2012

Carolyn Williams
Senior Writer

Director Colin Trevorrow’s first foray into the realm of feature films makes quite a splash with the irrepressibly offbeat “Safety Not Guaranteed.”

Jeff (Jake Johnson), an irritatingly cocky Seattle magazine editor, encounters an unusual anonymous want ad which inspires a story. The advertisement reads: “Wanted: Someone to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. You’ll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. Safety not guaranteed.” With the help of two less-than-enthusiastic interns, the dour, sarcastic Darius (Aubrey Plaza) and the meekly disinterested Arnau (Karan Soni), Jeff heads off to Ocean View in search of the ad’s author.

After an unpromising start (Jeff, in his smugness, manages to alarm the target of their investigation within seconds), Darius grudgingly takes the investigative lead, winning the very paranoid Kenneth’s trust (Mark Duplass) with a combination of deadpan and black comedy. Once she passes the test personality-wise, extensive training ensues. Kenneth, who believes he is being followed by government agents, also claims to have built a time machine, and plans to return to 2001 to stop his girlfriend from dying. Scenes of target practice and stamina building between the new partners continue, but even as the pair begins to grow closer, Darius strictly maintains her undercover role.

Jeff, meanwhile, has revealed that the real reason he wanted to go to Ocean View after all was to track down an old high school girlfriend. Though initially disappointed that two decades have aged her, their romance actually serves to humanize the otherwise intolerable Jeff character. He is further improved when he helps the painfully shy Arnau finally get some much-needed action.

Audience members connected with the film’s storytelling and overall message.

“‘Safety Not Guaranteed’ proves that good movies don’t need to have big name actors,” moviegoer Steve Kluemper said.

“[It was] an unexpected and quirky film that had the audience rooting for the underdog to do the impossible,” said Emily Conners ’14.

All that remains to be seen is what happens with the supposed time machine. “Safety Not Guaranteed” keeps you guessing until the very end, successfully utilizing a cast of mainly television actors and a script full of comical dialogue to evoke a real-life sort of science fiction which, like its characters, is definitely worth the benefit of the doubt.

Arts & Life Restaurants Review

Stay Sweet Cupcakery

Post author By Emily Guillen
Post date September 5, 2012

Emily Guillen
Editor-in-Chief

With cupcakes being all the rage right now, I wanted to try Lewisburg’s latest foray into the fad: the Stay Sweet Cupcakery.

Located next to The Bull Run Inn at 611 Market St., the shop offers cupcakes, ice cream, Italian cream sodas and other sweet treats. There is also a shop located on S. Market Street in Selinsgrove.

I decided to test six cupcakes and an Italian cream soda. Among the many cupcake offerings, my dining partner and I chose to taste chocolate peanut butter swirl, white chocolate raspberry, chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting, Boston cream, red velvet with cream cheese frosting and black and white.

The chocolate peanut butter swirl was definitely the favorite of the six. The chocolate cake was moist with a creamy peanut butter and fudge swirled icing. The taste resembled a really creamy Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.

Unfortunately, our second pick in the cupcake draft turned out to be a disappointment. The white chocolate raspberry’s pink icing looked amazing but fell flat. It was way too sweet and neither the cake nor the icing had a strong enough raspberry flavor.

To make it worse, we found the chocolate with vanilla buttercream frosting to be a bit of a disappointment with bland flavor and overly sweet icing.

I didn’t particularly care for the Boston cream cupcake, but my partner in food review crime enjoyed it, except for the slightly stale cake portion.

The red velvet cupcake brought the Stay Sweet Cupcakery back into my good graces. With red velvet cake and cream cheese icing as one of my favorite combinations, I was pleased to find the cake moist and the icing fluffy.

Emily Guillen | The Bucknellian
Black & white cupcake from the Stay Sweet Cupcakery.

The black and white, while fairly traditional (chocolate cupcake, vanilla icing with a small shot of chocolate icing in the middle), kept me interested. The little shot of chocolate gave a nice kick to the classic.

After seeing the Italian cream sodas on the menu, I decided to top off my cupcake meal with a raspberry soda. While delicious, it was a little sweet and its creaminess left me feeling a little heavy.

Overall, the bakery had some highs and some lows, but I recommend you check it out. The only things to note are the prices. For a small, rural town like Lewisburg, $2.55 per cupcake seems a little high. At least the slightly discounted prices of $15 for six and $28 for a dozen are a little more reasonable.

Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 to 8 p.m.

Arts & Life Campus Events Review

Naomi Shihab Nye uncovers poetic “appetite for language”

Post author By jal060
Post date September 4, 2012

Christina Oddo
Assistant Arts & Life Editor

In all the images that surround us, there is poetic possibility. For writer and poet Naomi Shihab Nye, she finds inspiration in both the seen and unseen.

Nye spoke of the apparent appetite for language across the globe, as well as the poetic possibility embedded in the images that surround us, in her Q&A session on Sept. 4 in the Willard Smith Library.

Nye spent 37 years traveling around the world and has written and/or edited more than 30 volumes.

Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, Nye additionally held a poetry reading in Bucknell Hall about her family history as well as how her memories and knowledge of this history shape her work and are translated through her poetry.

Nye’s work is guided by a sort of hope, as she described during the session, in a way that she is able to abandon some work and move on, viewing half-baked texts as part of a bigger project. She believes the text is ultimately working to find us.

“Perhaps more than anything I remembered the necessity of remaining hopeful,” Professor Shara McCallum said. “Ms. Nye is one of the most optimistic people I’ve ever encountered. I think for anyone who attended her events yesterday, some of the radiance of being in her presence is still with us.”

As Nye traveled through Pennsylvania on her way to the University, she wrote down road signs that, to her, seemed unordinary. Lines and names, she explained, are full of poetic possibility and are given to us in our surroundings. Details fill many places and create a rich environment. Nye finds these opportunities to soak in this richness and later display it through language to be imperative.

Nye, in her attempt to encompass and answer the question, in poetry, described poetry as a voice through which meaning is transported with care. We should see our lives as stories, and that the narrative has a sort of preciousness linked to it. In fact, life is a continuous text, and we should work to find and evoke images.

For Nye, writing specific lines feels like a confession, a relief from pressure. Also, a poet need not know exactly where a piece is going because language is a process of speaking, creating and solving.

Nye’s poetry reading in Bucknell Hall was well attended. Nye spoke of her experience of taking a tour of the Poetry Path and how she enjoyed being featured as part of this “generous gift to the pedestrians” of Lewisburg. Nye was humble and grateful, repeating several times that speaking at the University was not an opportunity she would take for granted.

“Ms. Nye’s humour, honesty, and warmth in her delivery–as well as her poems themselves, which carry such wisdom–together made for an extraordinary reading,” Professor Shara McCallum said.

Throughout her talk, Nye spoke of her son, about mistakes, about her father and more. Nye also recited a brand new poem and poems regarding situations in which people are suffering more than you are.

Moreover, Nye emphasized the importance of note keeping. This importance was made apparent through her final story, a prose-based poem full of detail and humor.

“I really liked Nye’s advice about taking notes throughout your life,” Jennifer Fish ’14 said. “Notes would not only bring clarity to numerous old memories, but she suggested that memories make great triggering subjects for poems.”

Arts & Life Books Review

“The Ruins of Us” provides an escape to the past

Post author By jal060
Post date September 3, 2012

Carolyn Williams
Senior Writer

“The Ruins of Us,” Keija Parssinen’s debut novel, echoes back to her childhood in Saudi Arabia. A third generation expatriate, Parssinen’s heroine, Rosalie, channels the author’s obvious love of her youthful home, and demonstrates a serious understanding of a culture which seems exotic at best, and crazy at worst, to most of her American audience. Parssinen’s success in this novel is making the setting accessible, which is important because of how it defines the characters who make it their home.

Rosalie, a 40-something wife and mother of two, begins “The Ruins of Us” by telling the reader that she has it all: a devoted husband, a nearly grown up son and daughter, fantastic wealth and a home in the beautiful, unforgiving desert she loves. That is, until she discovers that two years ago, her husband, Abdullah, took a second wife and wants them all to be a happy, traditional family together.

Rosalie’s desperate search for an escape from the half-life she is revealed to be living takes up much of the beginning of the novel. Abdullah’s polygamy is legal in Saudi Arabia, and divorce, though possible, will take away Rosalie’s children and life as she knew it for nearly 30 years. An expatriate college dropout without any particular talents or money, Rosalie finds herself with her back to a wall, yet she cannot help but love her husband and mourn the loss of their life together.

Aside from Rosalie’s struggle with herself, Abdullah is forced to take a look at his flailing family: his fiery first wife, whose life he has upended; his independent daughter, Mariam, hoping to change her world for the better with feminist journalism; his radically devout son, Faisal, who wants to put things back to the way they were on the Arab peninsula before Westernization; and the promise of a new life with his second wife, who remains mostly a blank throughout the novel. Rosalie and Abdullah’s crisis is observed by their old college friend, Dan, who went through a divorce recently, and despite missing his old life, cannot help but nurse a longtime crush on the spirited Rosalie.

Everything comes to a head in an escape attempt, Big Brother-type government intervention and a kidnapping. “The Ruins of Us” does not necessarily end in a way that will satisfy all audiences, but the unbiased reader will agree that the ending serves the book’s purpose well. Though slow to start, the novel definitely picks up speed and interest as it progresses, as likeable characters take shape and dramas unfold. Most importantly, the backdrop of exotic Saudi Arabia manages to keep everyone on their toes.

Arts & Life Campus Events Review

Racial issues creeping into higher education prove worthy for discussion

Post author By jal060
Post date August 26, 2012

Elaine Lac
Contributing Writer

Not many people truly understand the effects of racism on higher education. For Dr. Robin DiAngelo, an expert in whiteness studies, her awareness of racial issues has led her to confront the issue head-on.

On Aug. 23 at the Elaine Langone Center Forum, DiAngelo explained that racism is very much a part of society, but in a different context than during the Civil War era. Now, there is an unwillingness to mesh different racial groups.

“It’s hard for white people to get into this conversation, and like [DiAngelo] was saying, white people usually see it as a problem, but not as a personal problem. I think changing the lens from racism to whiteness makes it clearer that it is white people’s business which gets them into the conversation,” said Coralynn Davis, director of Women’s and Gender Studies.

DiAngelo used her teaching experience as an example; students who lived in predominately white areas wrote about their experience with racism. The responses generally came back as: “I was really lucky. I grew up in an all-white neighborhood, so I didn’t learn anything about racism.”

DiAngelo replied that this lack of exposure is the problem. She asked, “What if a person of color was introduced to the community?” They might respond, “We didn’t have this terrible thing [racism] until another race came. Just because there isn’t exposure doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist. Being closed off from multi-racial relationships leaves people uninformed, and only reinforces this ‘new racism’ where instead of being aware of race, people ignore it.”

The influence of white culture can be found everywhere. In education, which is DiAngelo’s main focus, 90 percent of teachers are white and the statistics are not shifting. In popular movies such as “The Lord of the Rings,” DiAngelo pointed out that 100 percent of the mythical creatures are white, while the enemies are portrayed as dark-skinned, indigenous looking monsters.

Her point was that racism still exists, but it doesn’t demonize people. Instead, people should be aware of other races and work to understand each other. In her last slide, she put up a picture of a cat stepping on a hot tin roof, symbolizing that people have to be careful about what they say since awareness is the first step towards the solution.

“It was interesting to see a woman who wasn’t of color giving a speech, and trying to point out the difference between the oppression that existed and trying to tell other people about white supremacy,” Aida Woldegiorgis ’16 said.

“I would like to see two things. I would like to see [the University] be more diverse, in all areas including students and faculty. I would also like us to be more competent as a community where everyone’s voices can be more easily heard,” Davis said.