The Book of Eli

3 stars

Washington portrays a lone warrior in a harsh post-apocalyptic world.

Rating: 14A
Stars: Denzel Washington, Gary Oldman, Mila Kunis, Ray Stevenson

What’s the story?
Thirty years after global destruction, mankind struggles to survive in a world where you must kill or be killed. All the while, a Joan-of-Arc-like figure named Eli (Washington) makes his way “west” with a quest, protecting a book that is the only hope for mankind. Problems arise when Carnegie (Oldman) seeks to get his hands on the book for his own means.

Why see it?
The dream-like cinematography is haunting, and the brutal reality of Eli’s world at once disturbs and draws you in. While The Book of Eli has a very depressing tone, the movie focuses on hope amidst despair and has some truly beautiful moments, like a subtly touching scene where Eli prays with a baffled, wary Solara (Kunis), who later tries to pray herself with her mother. The film also paints Eli’s unwavering faith with a tender sensitivity, showing the strengths as well as weaknesses of humanity. For many, The Book of Eli will be an opportunity to raise some interesting questions about the ideas of faith and humanity.

Problems?
If you can’t stand gore, consider yourself warned – violence is prevalent, although it is arguably not of the gratuitous kind. Disturbing things like cannibalism are also alluded to. But unfortunately, the movie fails most in trying to be both a testosterone-filled action flick and a deep, intelligent, thought-provoking film; it ends up somewhere in the middle. Much of the problem lies in the screenwriting, as quite often we must assume what Eli is rather than being shown who he is, which lessens the overall emotional impact of the film. Still, the acting skills of Washington and Oldman do much in the way of compensation.

All in all:
An interesting take on the concept of faith and hope.

The Spy Next Door

3 stars

Jackie Chan is in the CIA – otherwise known as Chan In Action.

Rating: PG
Stars: Jackie Chan, Billy Ray Cyrus, George Lopez, Amber Valletta

What’s the story?
Bob Ho (Chan) is a spy working for the CIA, but he hasn’t had a chance to tell his girlfriend and next-door-neighbour Gillian (Valletta) and her three kids about his work. Since her kids think he’s boring, they haven’t quite warmed up to their mom’s new boyfriend. So when Gillian needs to leave town briefly, Bob offers to take care of her children in hopes of some good bonding time. When one of the children accidentally downloads a top-secret file, Bob has to use his spy skills to prevent an enemy group from obtaining the file all the while protecting the kids.

Why see it?
If you like action movies mixed with comedy then you will really enjoy this movie. Jackie Chan’s character is funny with a bit of cheesy on the side – so don’t expect a CIA suspense thriller, but be prepared for a lighthearted Jackie Chan playing a spy who doesn’t take himself too seriously. Jackie Chan’s performance was average compared to many of his other films, although he hasn’t gotten too old for some pretty neat stunts. The inclusion of actors like Billy Ray Cyrus and George Lopez also added a dose of extra humour to the movie. The Spy Next Door is a good movie for a family outing.

Problems?
After seeing this average movie, I felt let down as I expected more action and suspense. It was definitely created for a younger audience with the emphasis on family humour and not thrilling action and fighting scenes. However, very young children might be scared by some of the fighting, so beware whom you bring to watch this movie – it’s still no Disney flick.

All in All:
Jackie Chan shows us how the spy business can be funny as well.

The Hurt Locker

5 Stars

Rating: 18A
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie

Best Picture winner, not your run-of-the-mill war film.

What’s the story?
Written by journalist Mark Boal, who in 2004 was entrenched with a US bomb squad in Iraq, The Hurt Locker follows the dangerous missions of “Camp Victory,” a U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit. After tragedy strikes the leader of the unit, Sergeant William James (Renner) takes over and leads his team into a war zone. Some consider James an elite bomb technician, but when he begins to single-handedly disarms explosives and approaches missions like a wild man, concern from his team, especially Sergeant JT Sanborn (Mackie), begins to grow about whether he is the right person for the job.

Why see it?
The Hurt Locker is one of those movies that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Award-winning director Katheryn Bigelow creates one of the most realistic war films of our generation. It simply is flawless in every aspect. It has the action and intensity you expect from a war film, with a small touch of satire whilst delivering an emotional tone that will touch your heart and mind, making it deserving of its Best Picture win at this year’s Academy Awards.

Who Should Skip It?
Those who do not like loud artillery fire, and some less than reputable coarse language should skip this film.

All In all:
A powerful, yet dark picture worthy of all its kudos.

Top 10 Guilty Pleasures of Teenage Boys

Traditional gender roles are going the way of the dinosaur as women triumph in hockey and the men of our world dig deeper into their feminine sides.

Sure, it’s rare to hear two men discuss Edward Cullen or the latest episode of Glee with one another – but with their trustworthy gal pals, they are starting to reveal their true colours.

It is through these discussions with my male friends that I have discovered the Top 10 guilty pleasures of teenage boys!

1. THE TWILIGHT SERIES

Be it jealousy or emulation, male teens can’t get enough of Edward Cullen. Ideal for the closet romantic, Twilight is a secret hit amongst men.

2. FACEBOOK STALKING

Facebook is the optimum tool for jealous females. With one click, you get all the information you need on your boyfriend, crush or ex. The best part is, men do it too… they just won’t admit it.

3. POP MUSIC

Love or hate Disney stars, you must admit their melodies are catchy. Guys may complain about the Jonas Brothers in front of friends, but nothing can stop them from singing Burnin’ Up in the shower.

4. REALITY TV SHOWS LIKE THE BACHELOR

Twenty-five women vying for one man’s heart hardly seems like a manly premise for a TV show. However, watching women trying to win a man’s attention is entertaining – and every guy has a bit of a romantic side.

5. ROMANTIC COMEDIES

It’s not all about explosions anymore! Men these days do enjoy rom-coms and can even shed a tear or two… a supportive gal pal will just pretend she didn’t see them.

6. SHOPPING

Boys love to buy clothes and look good. It’s no secret that it’s a material world, so why do boys insist on hiding the fact that they enjoy mall outings as much as their female counterparts?

7. HAIR, HAIR, HAIR!

Here’s some news for you girls: boys bring gel to school. And yes, they do their hair in the washroom too. Shocked? Don’t be.

8. FASHION MAGAZINES

Maybe it’s the content, maybe it’s the pictures, but give a guy your Cosmo and he’ll be occupied and in a fit of giggles for days.

9. MTV SHOWS LIKE JERSEY SHORE

It’s a recipe for disaster when clubbing party brats are shacked up in a beach house together. Between the trashy fights and “unscripted” *ahem* drama, boys find a comfy middle ground that entertains them to no end.

10. GLEE

This high-school musical sitcom is taking the world by storm. Whether it’s the drama, the singing football players or the complicated love triangles, something about Glee simply speaks to the male population.

Regardless of what their guilty pleasures may be, teenage boys are starting to open up about them. The next step? Coming clean to the other boys! Of course, that may just take a few more decades of advancement.

St. Patrick’s Day Quiz

1. What year did St. Patrick’s Day become a public holiday (at least in Ireland)?
a) 1879
b) 1903
c) 1911
d) 1926

2. Where is Canada’s longest-running St. Patrick’s Day parade?
a) Ottawa
b) Toronto
c) Montreal
d) Fredericton

3. Which US city dyes one of its rivers green as a St. Patrick’s Day tradition?
a) New York City
b) St. Louis
c) San Francisco
d) Chicago

4. What is the traditional Irish St. Patrick’s Day meal?
a) Corned beef and cabbage
b) Skirts and kidneys
c) Irish stew
d) Bangers and mash

5. What colour badges do children traditionally wear on St. Patrick’s Day?
a) Red, orange, and yellow
b) Black, brown, and purple
c) Orange, white, and green
d) Red, white, and blue

6. In which province was St. Patrick’s Day a provincial holiday until 1992?
a) New Brunswick
b) Nova Scotia
c) Prince Edward Island
d) Newfoundland and Labrador

7. When was the first St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston?
a) 1702
b) 1737
c) 1786
d) 1823

8. Dublin’s St. Patrick’s Day festival runs for how many days every year?
a) Three days
b) Four days
c) Five days
d) Six days

9. Shamrocks were worn to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day as early as which century?
a) 1400s
b) 1500s
c) 1600s
d) 1700s

10. In which country did the first St. Patrick’s Day parade take place?
a) USA
b) Ireland
c) UK
d) Canada

Score 1 point for every question you get right and 0 points for every one you get wrong.

Answers:
1: B, 2: C, 3: D, 4: A, 5: C, 6: D, 7: B, 8: D, 9: C, 10: A

If you scored…

0-2 points: Don’t feel bad; this quiz was actually a bit tough. Keep your leprechaun spirits up!

3-6 points: You’re not bad at this stuff! Keep on learning and you’ll do even better next time.

7-10 points: You sure know a lot about St. Patrick’s Day! Good job!

Top 10 April Fools’ Day Pranks

April Fools’ Day is easily the best day of the year for pranksters, when optimum ruckus can be caused at only a fraction of the getting-in-trouble price. Here is a list of the best April Fools’ Day pranks. By the way, your socks are untied. April Fools!

The Exam is Today!
Pick your most easily excitable friends and seriously inform them that the major final exam that they’ve been stressing for is today (a deadpan expression is absolutely necessary for this). Watch them freak out for about 10 seconds, and then begin to point and laugh.

Gummy Food
Grab an apple and carefully poke holes in it. Then, proceed to put the gummy worms in the apple and give one to your friends and family. Laugh.

You’re Late!
Call a friend an hour earlier than they wake up in the morning, and frantically ask them where they are. Depending on how sleep-deprived they are, you can get away with saying things like, “Where are you? You were supposed to pick me up on the elephant hours ago!”

Colour Your World
Put food colouring in milk and watch your family try to explain the green milk in the carton. If you’re feeling really adventurous, put food colouring in your butter – green toast, anyone?

Cell Conundrums
Grab your friend’s cellphone and duct tape it to the bottom of a chair, making sure that the ringer is on. Then call it and watch the fun ensue!

Sticky Money
Hot glue or super glue money to the ground, (or a desk or a chair), and watch as people try to pick it up. If you have a lenient teacher, glue it to their desk. One of my teachers said that whoever could remove the money from his desk could have it. People brought chisels.

Rrrrrip!
Wait until someone walks ahead of you and drop something. Then rip a sheet of paper as they bend down to pick it up. This will simulate the sound of their pants ripping! You can help with the confusion by stifling a giggle and conspicuously eyeing their pants.

Mischievous Mind Games
The best part of April Fools is the prankee waiting to be pranked, especially if you build up the hype before the day of. Make a big, menacing sign that says April Fools! and tape it to someone’s desk or locker, but don’t do or say anything else. This will freak them out completely, and they’ll spend the entire day paranoid, asking nervously if you’ve seen anything suspicious. Chuckle and walk away.

The Ring
Early in the morning (or late at night), call your friend on the phone and creepily whisper “Seven days… seven days…” Make sure they’ve seen The Ring for optimum freak-out potential.

Whipped Cream in Shoes
Whipped cream is not strictly necessary for this sticky-sweet prank as honey and chocolate sauce work just as well. If you want to limit the clean-up factor, line the shoes with plastic wrap and then fill them up with lots of whipped cream! This works best without socks, for the optimum “gush through the toes” feeling.

Top 10 Oscar Best Picture Winners of All Time

Every year the crème de la crème battle it out at the Oscars for the prestigious Best Picture award. We all have our predictions for this year’s winner, but let’s not forget about the amazing films from the past. Here are Youthink’s picks for the Best Picture winners of all time.

10. Gone With the Wind – 1939
This epic film set during the American Civil War tells the complicated love story of Scarlet O’Hara and what was probably the first love triangle ever made into a movie.

9. Casablanca – 1943
In WWII, Rick learns the real reason why his one true love, Ilsa, left him alone in Paris. While fleeing the Germans, they both realize how quickly plans can change and go wrong.

8. Oliver! – 1968
Based on the classic story by Charles Dickens, Oliver! takes us into the life of a poor orphan boy who learns how to “pick a pocket or two” from the best singing street-urchins there ever were.

7. The Departed – 2006
Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon get so absorbed in their double lives that they must figure out who each other really is in order to save themselves from the Irish Mafia in Boston.

6. The Sound of Music – 1965
Set in Austria in the 1930s, this movie made us fall in love with Julie Andrews all over again and taught us how to remember our musical scales with the classic Do Rae Mi song.

5. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King – 2003
Third in the trilogy and a worldwide best seller, LOTR: Return of the King ended the journey that Frodo and Sam took to destroy the One Ring and all they encountered on their way.

4. Chicago – 2002
Set in 1920, Chicago follows the life of two showgirls on death row and left us singing sultry show tunes for days on end.

3. Forrest Gump – 1994
Forrest Gump, a man with a unique perspective on life, takes us on an historic journey and proves that what his mama said is true: “Life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.”

2. Titanic – 1997
James Cameron’s multi-million dollar reenactment of the fateful journey of the Titanic, made us all start to lean over the bow of every boat screaming, “I’m the king of the world!”

1. Slumdog Millionaire – 2008
Coming from the slums of India, Jamal (Dev Patel) conquers all the hardships he has faced in his impoverished life to win an Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire and the girl he has loved since he was a child.

Game Review: Mass Effect 2

In 2007, fans of Bioware and science fiction were treated to a little game called Mass Effect. With in-depth RPG mechanics and a densely populated alien world, Mass Effect soon became a well-known franchise. A little more than two years later, Bioware has released the sequel to this smash hit, Mass Effect 2 (very original, I know).

Let's talk about the good things first.

The game is much cleaner now. The first one, while visually solid, had a boatload of technical issues. From constant texture pop in, long load times and a poor frame rate (not to mention the incredibly long elevator rides), the sequel solves most, if not all, of these problems. The frame rate is much better and texture pop in has been abolished.

The game opens shortly after the ending of the first. Commander Shepard and his crew have defeated Saren and his Geth minions and are now roaming the galaxy, wiping out small pockets of resistance.

During a surprise alien attack, Commander Shepard (your character) is killed saving the handicapped pilot of your ship, the Normandy. After floating around in space for a while, Shepard is picked up by a Cerberus ship, a pro-human organization that requires Shepard in order to save human colonies from a terrible alien threat known as the Collectors. Cerberus spends two years using state-of-the-art medical equipment to bring you back.

The game takes you to planets all over the galaxy, each with its own vibrant and well-thought-out theme and atmosphere. You work your way from planet to planet, gathering a team of professionals to help you in your mission.

Along the way, you encounter many of your previous teammates, who have since moved on to other things, during the two years that you were gone. Most of the characters on your team are well fleshed out individuals with a unique back-story and plenty of interesting dialogue options.

Not only are the members of your team unique and interesting, but nearly every minor character is as well. Everyone, from a grizzled space cop to a video game salesman, all comes with incredible dialogue, subtle humour and plenty of entertainment. By doing this, the whole world of Mass Effect 2 seems almost alive and completely plausible.

Now I do have a few gripes with the game.

For starters, it's much more of a shooter than its processor. Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but seeing as how only two of the six character classes are heavily based on shooting (the others focused on biotic and tech powers), it makes the game feel a little unbalanced when playing as on of the other classes. It's almost you need to play as one of those two classes to get the most out of the game.

Another issue I have with the game is that because it is so much more of a shooter, it loses a lot of the RPG mechanics that were a big appeal for me in the first place.

The game also streamlines the equipment system. Instead of weapons and armour scattered throughout the world, you have one suit of armour, which you customize with colours and a few different parts you find at vendors and on missions. This takes away some of the charm that the first game had where you could spend hours trying to find the best equipment possible.

Overall, Mass Effect 2 is a very solid game, it streamlines some of the aspects of the first game and the world is well developed and very fleshed out. The characters are numerous, and all of them have their own personality.

If you like space, great stories or even just shooting people with laser guns, Mass Effect 2 is your one-stop shop for all of the above.

Book Review: Hunted (A House of Night Novel) by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast

2 stars

Hunted, the fifth book in the House of Night novel series is weak in comparison to the first four books in the series. This book is filled with unnecessary and uninteresting details, and the events that take place in the book only span over two days.

Zoey Redbird – the main character – is initially portrayed as an excellent role model for teens in Marked (book one), but now seems to be a good example of a teenager who continuously makes bad choices. After going from three boyfriends at once to none in Chosen (the third book), she’s back to three again, seemingly sending the message that cheating is okay.

With only one interesting event that lasted about four pages, Hunted is utterly mundane.

Book Review: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

3 stars

Harvard symbologist, Robert Langdon is back in this follow-up to The Da Vinci Code.

This time around, Langdon is in Washington D.C. to give a speech at a conference hosted by a Mason and his mentor, Peter Solomon. However, things are not what they seem in D.C. Peter Solomon is kidnapped and the only way to rescue him is to unveil the secrets of the “Ancient Mysteries” – a historical concept that Robert Langdon considers to be a myth.

But this kidnapper is well-versed with the Ancient Mysteries and has Peter Solomon’s severed hand placed in the U.S. Capitol – an invitation to solve the mysteries – leaving Langdon no choice but to believe in it and to pursue the myth.

This book has its interesting moments but overall Robert Langdon is always in professor-mode as he explains the symbols that surround him to Director Inuoe Sato of the National Security. The chapters dealing with Langdon’s lectures can be boring, and the book is overly philosophical at times.

However, if you like reading philosophical books as well as learning more about conspiracy theories of secret messages in history, The Lost Symbol is a good read.