Lack of grit, nuance handicaps feel-good football movie

Courtesy of aceshowbiz.com "The Blind Side" (2009) tells the story of a hopeless and homeless black teenager fighting desperately to overcome obstacles correlated with race, poverty and his mother's drug addiction and it starts with a Sandra Bullock voice-over about football. If that isn't indicative of the movie's flaws, I don't know what is. There's nothing particularly bad about "The Blind Side" except that it could have been so much better.

Leads shine in student production of ‘Antigone'

EUNICE LEE / The Dartmouth Alexis Monroe '13 and Bill Calder '12 brilliantly acted out their characters' dueling approaches to fate and political philosophy in the Shakespeare Alley Showcase's performance of Jean Anouilh's 1943 adaptation of "Antigone" this weekend, The student-produced play, directed by Sarah Laeuchli '11, was performed at the Bentley Theater in the Hopkins Center. As in the original Greek tragedy, conflict arises in Anouilh's revisionist adaptation when Antigone played by Monroe attempts to bury her brother Polynices, who killed her other brother in a duel. Antigone faces execution for this act because Creon, her uncle and the new king played by Calder, has declared Polynices a traitor and prohibited his burial. Anouilh adapted "Antigone" in the context of the Nazi occupation of Paris.

BOOKED SOLID: Hipster author as witty as ever in latest collection of essays

Courtesy of Amazon.com Full disclosure: I have a crush on Chuck Klosterman. It started the first time I laughed out loud reading "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto" (2004). I became full-blown schoolgirl-worthy when I glanced at his picture on the back cover I have a thing for guys with glasses.

Classic rock nostalgia, stacked cast buoys ‘Pirate Radio'

Courtesy of citylife.co.uk.com The speaker-busting dance montage that accompanies the opening credits of "Pirate Radio" (2009) is a rousing tribute to the joy and liberation that rock and roll music brought to a generation in the 1960s. That "Pirate Radio" can entertain an audience for a full two hours on the sheer force of that jubilance is a testament to the strength of the cast and the staying power of rock and roll. In this retooled version of the British film "The Boat That Rocked" (2009), a group of bohemian DJs pump round-the-clock rock music from the basement of a rusty tanker just off the northern shore of Great Britain in 1966.

HEAR AND NOW: Hip-hop's next superstar

Courtesy of GQ.com When Wale performed at Dartmouth two months ago, I lost count of how many people I heard pronouncing his name like the marine mammal rather than the correct "WAH-lay." The truth is, despite his relative obscurity on this campus, Wale has been hip-hop's all-but-anointed "next big thing" for years.

Dartmouth's ‘Rocky Horror Show' is campy delight

SAM PURCELL / The Dartmouth "The Rocky Horror Show" has a long tradition of audience participation, with audience members throwing props onto the stage and shouting out lines not written in the script.

Play breaks theatrical conventions

TILMAN DETTE / The Dartmouth Senior Staff Written to be performed in art galleries, Tim Crouch's award-winning play "England" blurs the line between theater and performance art.

AS SEEN ON: A promising start for ABC's sci-fi show "V"

Courtesy of examiner.com Over the past decade, science-fiction programming has declined rapidly in quality. Sure, there is an entire cable network dedicated to the genre (SyFy, formerly the Sci Fi Channel), but unless you feel like paying for cable programming, network TV has very little to offer. Recent science-fiction series on the networks have all been disappointments, and many have seen quick cancellation: Shows including ABC's "Invasion" (2005), CBS's "Threshold" (2005) and NBC's "Bionic Woman" (2007), for example, all come to mind. The few relative hits in the sci-fi genre, NBC's "Heroes" and "The Sarah Connor Chronicles," meanwhile, are pretty much circling the drain. When the track record is this poor, fans have a legitimate reason to be skeptical whenever the networks market a new project as the next sci-fi hit. Based on the pilot of ABC's much-anticipated action-drama "V," however, sci-fi fans may have reason to celebrate. "V" is already critically acclaimed, and appears to be a ratings hit: The series premiere, which aired last Tuesday at 8 p.m., garnered 13.9 million viewers, ranking first in its time slot and first for all new series premieres this season. A reimagining of a 1984 miniseries, "V," which recounts the story of technologically advanced aliens invading Earth, provides an imaginative spin on the cliche of the alien invasion. The series does recall some previous incarnations of this theme: The show's pilot features a scene eerily reminiscent of "Independence Day" (1996), in which the visiting mothership fleet appears in over 29 major cities around the globe.

Film professor Ehrlich ends 18-year tenure at the College

ANDY MAI / The Dartmouth Staff Beloved animation professor David Ehrlich, an 18-year veteran of the film and media department, announced earlier this year that he plans to leave Dartmouth at the end of the Fall term in order to pursue a teaching opportunity at an art and design college on Gulangyu, a tropical island off the coast of South China. "I love Dartmouth and its students, and am ambivalent about leaving, but after 18 years, it's time to move on," Ehrlich said in an interview with The Dartmouth this week. Ehrlich is a world-renowned animator credited with making the first animal sculptural hologram, which he titled "Oedipus at Colomus," in 1978.

Sit-Down Tragedy fills stand-up comedy niche on campus

ALICE ZHAO / The Dartmouth Staff Few groups on campus can claim to have once considered going by names like "The Half-Eaten Cookies," or "The Tim Goldberg." But Sit-Down Tragedy, a student comedy troupe that appears to have found its own niche on campus less than two years after it was established, is not exactly your typical club. "Because the other performance groups on campus had whimsical, witty names like Casual Thursday and Dog Day Players, we decided we needed one too." Angel Castillo '10 said. From a wit standpoint, at least, the current name is an upgrade: Originally called the Dartmouth Stand-Up Comedy Group, the troupe was founded by Fred Meyer '08, and first met at India Queen to practice stand-up.

Rising opera star Roberts '00 lands lead role in ‘La Boheme'

Courtesy of VAopera.com Since graduating over nine years ago, opera singer Elizabeth Roberts '00 has studied under opera greats and performed on stages nationwide.

Graduate students experiment with digital arrangements

SUJIN LIM / The Dartmouth Hovey's Lounge in the basement of Thayer Dining Hall played host last Thursday to performances of original digital music compositions by faculty and graduate students.

‘Panda Toes' blog won Dona '10 international attention

New novel pays homage to ‘Lolita'

Courtesy of JoshuaGaylord.com A Nabokovian "Gossip Girl" that is refreshingly smart in how it is less about the labels and more about the lust exhibited by students and teachers, Joshua Gaylord's debut novel "Hummingbirds," which was released on Oct.