“It started out as a joke.” said junior Zak Cassel. “But we thought it would be a good idea.”

According to Jackson, the club is just starting to form, but they have a few ideas. Activities will include memorizing every single spell from the Harry Potter series, come up with Harry Potter character alter egos for every member, and even organize a quidditch game (quidditch is a wizard sport that involves flying brooms, for anyone who doesn’t know).

According to junior Tori Lorch, meetings will take place in Mrs. Dunn’s room, which will act as the “rooms of requirements”. In the Harry Potter series, Harry and his friends hold secret meetings in these supposedly very secretive rooms.

Cassel said that to promote the club they plan to send out howlers as a method of recruiting members. In Harry Potter, howlers are literally screaming messages. A young wizard usually receives a howler if he or she has done anything bad.

“I really like Harry Potter.” Lorch said. “we’re starting this club because we all grew up with the books and enjoy the genre.”

“I first read Harry Potter in 3rd grade.” Jackson added. “It helped me learn to love books and learn how to read and write.”

The Harry Potter club was born from a little joking around and a very spur of the moment decision. Anyone who wishes to join can contact Megan Jackson.

www.sheetzbox.com

Is it fair to say that all “academics” are musical? Not even close. But for those of us who are, Sheetzbox is a gold mine. Here lies an impressive collection of free (yeah, you read correctly) sheet music for music you’d actually want to play. You know, not Engelbert Humperdinck.

For the Academic Time-waster

www.fiverr.com

Fiverr’s no way to make money, but it definitely makes for good fun. Have something other people could benefit from? A special skill? A postcard they’re missing from their collection? They might just pay you $5 to share it.

For the Time-waster

www.sporcle.com

There’s a game for everyone — literally — on this site, on which users have a set time limit to name all of the items within a given subject, such as Presidents of the USA or Countries of Europe. But really, it gets more fun than that. Can you name a song from a 5-second clip? Identify a famous movie from a drawing of a scene? We shall see.

Please submit suggestions for the Streamline’s Websites of the Week by posting a comment or emailing the opinions editor, Hannah Davis, at davis.hannahc@gmail.com.

One such band is Artist Vs Poet and their new album release Favorite Fix. The album isn’t bad, but it isn’t great either. It’s entirely composed of pop music with heavily girl-centered lyrics.

The best thing about the album lies within the lyrics. The song “Car Crash” holds a powerful hidden meaning directed towards relationships. The visual aid of a car crash pulls the listener into an intense and mixed view of love.

Artist vs. Poet is a band that has great vocal talent and can play a strong pop song, but in order to add more listeners to their fan base, they need to break out from all the other pop bands. Artist Vs Poet has the potential and shows so in their new release Favorite Fix, but the band needs to break away from the generic pop sound in order to gain more listeners and storm the music charts. The radio is ready for something new.

Consequently, I hesitated when I saw the preview for the Last Song, which stars Disney’s sweetheart Miley Cyrus. Yet I was drawn in by the music, beach setting–a Sparks trademark, and, I hate to admit, the attractiveness of the male lead. In the film, Ronnie (Cyrus) and her little brother are going to visit their father (Greg Kinnear) for the summer in Georgia, much to her chagrin; the relationship with her dad is rocky at best and she misses her rebellious lifestyle in New York. Over the course of the summer, she falls in love with a boy (of course!) and reconnects with her dad.

I took my little sister to see it on opening weekend, and I’ll gladly go watch it again. It had all the elements a good romance should include: there were funny moments, sad moments, and “aww” moments. It was about more than a fairytale summer fling; family relationships may be the most important theme of the film. I think that was why I liked it — the story stuck to the classic Sparks’ formula and that made it pleasant to watch.

One of the downfalls of the movie was Cyrus’ acting. She overworks the moody teenager bit, which can be slightly annoying. But I have to give her credit, in the most raw and emotional scenes, she made me believe and feel her sadness. Surprisingly, I thought the best acting in the whole movie was by Bobby Coleman, who plays Ronnie’s younger brother Jonah. He didn’t exaggerate emotion, but was just naturally hilarious and very honest. It was refreshing from a young child.

I’m excited that the movie versions of Sparks’ novels have gotten back on track with The Last Song. Hopefully the pattern continues, because I can’t wait to see more.

In all honesty, though, I didn’t think it would be too bad. I had listened to her read bits and pieces of the books. They were kind of cute in a dorky way. You know? They’re chock full of elementary level comedy.

And judging by the reaction of my fourth grade sister, the movie does them justice.

In short, the film follows the plot of the first installment of the book series by Jeff Kinney. The story centers around 12-year-old Greg Heffley, who has his doubts about beginning middle school.

I’m sure we can all atest to just how frightening it can be to enter a new campus. I could relate to the poor kid. The transition from elementary school to middle school is tough.

Greg is concerned that his best friend, Rowley Jefferson, isn’t quite ready to take the plunge. However, the tables are turned when Rowley breaks his arm, becomes the school newspaper’s cartoonist, and escalates into popularity, leaving Greg behind.

The two friends become immersed in an hour and a half of middle school drama, including a mother-son dance, some nasty bouts of karma, and the dreaded cheese touch (if you don’t already know what that is, you probably don’t want to).

Although it wasn’t exactly the most entertaining or profound film ever created (I do recall desperately trying to fight the urge to drift asleep a few times), it brought back some crazy memories. Regardless of wanting to admit it or not, middle school wasn’t that long ago. But it seems like a whole different world, doesn’t it?

Whether the highlight for you is the Forever the Sickest Kids song that plays when the credits roll, or a message hidden somewhere underneath the movie’s comedic exterior, I recommend watching it. (Use little siblings as an excuse. They’ll be thrilled.) The way I see it, its message is about priorities, friendship, and how you want to be viewed by others. As the schoolyear is ending and many students are close to transitioning from underclassman to upperclassman, or from upperclassman to college freshman, it’ll give you a lot to think about.

A Very Potter Musical is a full-length stage production. It’s a parody musical version of the beloved Harry Potter books and movies and was put on for free at the University of Michigan last April. Since then, it’s been posted on Youtube and has become quite popular among Harry Potter fans like myself.

When the play begins, it’s the start of another year of magic and fun at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Harry Potter is reunited with his two best friends, Ron Weasly and Hermione Granger. We then meet his other friends and even some enemies. One of such enemy is the infamous Draco Malfoy.

Draco is traditionally a boy’s role, but this parody calls for a girl to play the part. I really enjoyed this character. He constantly babbled on about how better he is than Potter and how he will transfer to Pigfarts, which is the finest wizard school on the planet Mars. The headmaster at Pigfarts is Rumrerore, a talking lion. Throughout the play, he also talks about how much he loathes Hermione Granger, which makes it obvious that he really likes her.
It doesn’t take long for trouble to arouse when we learn that professor Quirrel has been sharing his body with Voldermort, Harry’s lifelong enemy. Voldermort wants to kill Harry, ever since his first year at Hogwarts. Of course in a parody, the character of Voldermort has to be twisted around a bit. Voldermort and Quirrel had to learn to tolerate each other like two roommates who can’t stand living together. However, Voldermort regains his strength and does not have to rely on Quirrel anymore.

By the second act of the play, Voldermort is in full swing. Harry must learn how to fight him from Dumbledore, the old and wise headmaster at Hogwarts. Harry and Dumbledore are very close. Harry is told that he has to kill all the hocruxes Voldermort has left behind. A hocruxe is basically when Voldermort left a part of himself on something. Turns out, Voldermort left a hocruxe on Dumbledore’s Zac Efron poster, or “Zefron” poster. Not only must Harry find and kill all the hocruxes Voldermort left behind, but he must fight Voldermort himself. This puts Harry and his friends in grave danger.

A Very Potter Musical is basically all seven Harry Potter books in one play. You have to be somewhat familiar with the books to understand the humor, but I found you don’t have to be a total Harry Potter nerd. If you’re, say, only four or so books into the series, you can still watch this and enjoy it. However, the play does spoil the books a little bit.

One of the main things I enjoyed about A Very Potter Musical is the humor. There are a lot of crack-up worthy lines and songs. If you’re a Harry Potter fan looking for a time waster and good laugh, go to Youtube and search a very Potter musical. You won’t be disappointed.

www.coudal.com/moom.php

This website links fans of the fancy to established museum and gallery sites such as those run by the Museum of Modern Art, The Bauhaus Archive and The Art Institute of Chicago. It’s a class act.

For the Academic Time-waster

www.passiveagressivenotes.com

Would it be too much trouble for you to have a look?

For the Time-waster

www.omgpop.com

Choose from a bagillion games and waste your entire evening. If it weren’t for this website, I might have gotten my junior research paper done on time. Maybe.

Please submit suggestions for the Streamline’s Websites of the Week by posting a comment or emailing the opinions editor, Hannah Davis, at davis.hannahc@gmail.com.

If you have seen the Disney version of the movie, or even the newer one, you’d be surprised at what they changed. Some of the events are left out, as always happens when literature is transposed to the big screen, and the movies are based on both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, instead of just the namesake novel.

Considering that Lewis Carroll, the author, was born in the early 19^th century, the dialect of the book was understandably old-fashioned. But I was pleasantly surprised—the book wasn’t hard to understand at all. The simplicity of the language lent a natural feel to the surreal setting and events of the novel, which reads feels like a waking illusion, with the perfectly sane, random scene-switching and crazily improbable characters that seem so normal in our own dreams.

The famous trip down the rabbit hole sparks off the story, and from that point on Alice is swept up in a figurative whirlwind of rapid shrinking and growing (whenever she eats something she drastically changes her size). She meets such eccentric characters as the Mock Turtle, who sings a melancholy song about Mock Turtle Soup, the Mad Hatter, who’s simply mad, and the Duchess, who beats her pig-baby for sneezing too much. The homicidal queen screams constantly for executions, and the hookah-smoking caterpillar offers his wise but vague advice. After making acquaintance with each character, Alice moves confusedly on to the next place, the next person.

In Through the Looking Glass, Alice steps through a mirror that dissolves like mist beneath her touch, entering a slightly darker world where she meets an entirely new set of circumstances. She starts off in the Garden of Talking Flowers, where she meets the Red Queen (an entirely different person from the aforementioned queen) and is directed as to where to go. She moves throughout “squares” like a chess board, and is told that she shall become a queen herself when she reaches the other side. The looking-glass insects of buttered and honeyed toast, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, Humpty Dumpty, the Lion and the Unicorn, and a Knight are some of the new characters that appear in this story. The novel ends with a haunting and thought provoking poem that evokes a subtle sense of sadness.

This book isn’t for people who read books to get emotionally involved with the characters—there’s little to no actual character development. The novels are less about Alice herself than they are about what happens to her and who she meets in the mystical world of Wonderland. But if you’re into crazy and random events that compile into a novel that reads like a mixture between childhood dreams and nightmares, it’s perfect.

Bizarre. That one word sums up my experience I received from viewing this animation. The Cheshire cat’s statement, “We’re all a little mad here,” is 100 percent true. At every moment that I thought I might understand where the film was progressing to, another new and wild creature or psychotic character would turn up.

Although the Mad Hatter was completely mad, the scenes in which he was in entertained me more than any other parts of the movie. He reminded me of someone everyone could relate to. The crazy uncle that has a little too much at the family Christmas party comes to mind here.

As I mentioned earlier I am sixteen, but I think I may still get stuck with nightmares after being introduced to the character of the Cheshire cat. This is without a doubt the creepiest and most demented cat that I have ever seen.

What worries me is that if the cat freaked me out, then what did it do to small children watching the movie for the first time? People may say my childhood was deprived because I never saw the film, but after watching it I do not feel like I missed out on anything. If anything, I feel that my childhood was greatly improved by not watching this movie.

The film did have some interesting aspects to it. I couldn’t help but let out some chuckles after seeing the number of cigar-smoking animals in the movie. Not many animations of modern time would allow a protagonist to chomp down on a giant cigar, let alone multiple characters.

The movie also had a number of parts that were obviously directed towards a younger audience because of the sheer silliness of the scenes. The issue is that with a mixture of silliness and creepiness, who is the target audience?

The movie is considered one of Disney’s classics, but it only gave me the classic headache. I believe that what makes the movie a classic is its ever evident morale. Curiosity is good but do not let it consume you and put you in negative situations. If you are trying to teach this lesson to a younger child, then I would say wait until they are over seven at least. No small child deserves a nightmare from a Disney movie.

]]> http://www.mill-stream.org/2010/03/19/disneys-alice-in-wonderland-might-be-a-little-much-for-the-children/feed/ 0 http://www.mill-stream.org/2010/03/17/alice-is-unexpectedly-pleasant/ http://www.mill-stream.org/2010/03/17/alice-is-unexpectedly-pleasant/#comments Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:01:40 +0000 Paige Owens http://www.mill-stream.org/?p=2437 The March 5th release of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland was highly anticipated. I must say I was excited upon going to the movie theater to see it in 3D. The movie turned out to not be what I expected, but I still enjoyed it.

For the most part, I didn’t find the 3D effects all that impressive. It didn’t do much other than enhance the already stunning visual effects. However, there were those moments when it got really cool. The coolest 3D effects were with Chessur, the talking purple cat who has a habit of randomly appearing and disappearing. There was one moment where I felt like that cat was right in my face.

I saw the beloved, old animated version of Alice in Wonderland as a child, but I can only vaguely remember it. What I do remember of that version is that it was another happy Disney classic. I found Tim Burton’s version darker and a little more mature. In his version, Wonderland is known as Underland. Alice is not a child, but a 19 –year- old woman in Britain. She falls into the rabbit hole that takes her to Underland while at a boring Victorian party.

When she goes to Underland, Alice meets a lot of different characters, some more loveable than others. Johnny Depp is one of my personal favorite actors, and I thoroughly enjoyed his performance as the Mad Hatter. I don’t think anyone better could have been cast for the role. I also enjoyed the Red Queen, who was played by Helena Bonham Carter. She was evil in a comical way.

While I personally enjoyed this remake of Alice in Wonderland, I couldn’t help but think how a small child seeing it in 3D would feel. I noticed a few scenes that I felt children would find scary, especially in 3D, when it almost feels like you’re in the movie. I feel that Tim Burton could have turned it down just a notch, since it is a Disney movie a lot of children will see.

While this interpretation of a beloved Disney story may be a little darker, it is overall a pretty good movie. It’s something people of all ages can enjoy. You don’t even have to see it in 3D to see all the stunning visual effects.