Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism.
The Dartmouth
December 22, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth
Arts
Arts

Bland dragon fantasy film 'Eragon' is all smoke, no fire

By A.J. Fox | January 4, 2007

If you took the Lord of the Rings trilogy, peppered it with liberal helpings of Narnia, Harry Potter and any number of other big fantasy epics, then turned the whole concoction upside down and shook it until every last spark of creativity came tumbling out, the result might look more than a little bit like "Eragon." In an age when the grandeur of fantasy films is limited only by the imaginations of their creators, here is a movie made without the scarcest hint of inspiration or originality.

Arts

Dartmouth students pick favorite holiday movies for break

By Joseph Debonis | November 21, 2006

When you finally surrender to studying for those miserable finals and tire of sleeping on the couch because of myriad invading family members, the realization hits that with Thanksgiving comes a limited number of joys: football for some, turkey for others, shopping for the brave few and the universal delight sure to warm the hearts of the "grinchiest" folk, the commencement of the holiday movie season. While it is impossible to avoid succumbing to all that holiday cheer, we cannot all erect our Christmas trees before the leftover turkey has even reached the refrigerator.

Arts

'The Real Animal House' relies on perverse shock tactics

By Matt Ritger | November 13, 2006

Welcome to the world of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity in 1960, where brains scraped from the windshield of a car wreck are a perfect ingredient for the house brew, where the greatest achievement in recent memory was a brother who could shake quarters out of his foreskin, and where urination, defecation and masturbation make up the Holy Trinity. Chris Miller '63 brings this "awesomely depraved" world to light in his new memoir, "The Real Animal House." Miller is one of the screenwriters of the titular movie that made the Dartmouth fraternity scene so notorious.

Arts

Fate of Hovey murals remains a subject of controversy

By Hilary Becker | November 8, 2006

Editor's Note: This article is the second of a series examining hidden artworks at Dartmouth. Resting in the basement of Thayer Dining Hall are a series of images that have been called deeply offensive, racist and insulting, and have, over the years, continued to spark debate. The fate of the controversial Hovey murals is particularly interesting to contemplate in light of the College's recent uncovering of the Tiffany and Royal Bavarian stained glass windows in Rollins Chapel, which had been concealed since 1972 as a means of making the space less denominational. Painted in 1937-38 by American illustrator Walter Beach Humphrey '14, famous for his covers of "The Saturday Evening Post" and "Collier's," the Hovey murals were a reaction to the famous Orozco Frescoes in Baker Library. In a 1938 issue of the Dartmouth Alumni magazine, Humphrey wrote, "If my allusions to the celebrated murals in Baker Library seem ill chosen to anyone ... I feel it excusable to use them as a foil for my own ideas.

Trending
The Dartmouth