Classic ‘Star Fox’ title still soars high

I consider myself a cat person, but this fact did not stop me from wanting to be the top dog in “Star Fox 64.”

This title was definitely a gem for the Nintendo 64′s library back in July 1997, so I was thrilled at the opportunity of downloading the game on the Nintendo Wii’s Virtual Console to relive the magic.

Players control Fox McCloud, an ace pilot of the Arwing. Accompanying Fox in the skies is his trusty teammates: Peppy Hare, Falco Lombardi and Slippy Toad.

In a series of space missions, Fox and his crew venture throughout the Lylat System to stop the evil Andross from terrorizing the galaxy. Most of the stages involve maneuvering the Arwing around the screen on a sort of fixed-rail where the player basically blasts lasers at anything that moves – while of course avoiding friendly fire against teammates.

The Arwing comes equipped with lasers, bombs and is capable of handy aerial maneuvers like the barrel roll, U-turn and the somersault. There is also a tank and a submarine players can pilot for a few stages.

Overall, the gameplay has a sort of arcade-like feel that holds up quite well these days, especially considering how the game is more than a decade old. The levels are fast-paced shooting fests and are paced long enough so stages never begin to drag.

Not only that, the game’s combination of anthropomorphic characters with great voice acting really brings the game’s personality up a notch. For example, Fox sounds very heroic and confident, so it is believable that he is the leader of this Arwing team.

As for flaws in the game, there are only a few minor ones to point out. First off, the game is a bit on the brief side. An entire sitting from start to finish averages 40 minutes or less. The game does encourage extra playthroughs, allowing the player to try out a few more stages, but the title just leaves the player wanting more once all is said and done.

Another minor issue with the game is how the teammates of the “elite” Star Fox crew amount to nothing more than sheer incompetence. As Fox, players have to do pretty much everything in the game as the teammates do almost nothing. Sure, the teammates do provide hints and quips throughout the missions. However, the sense of a team completing these missions is never really achieved. The teammates could just be a bit less useless. Most of the time, a player plays babysitter trying to keep the baddies from blowing up your allies.

Regardless, this game proved to be quite delightful to play once again. It brought back fond memories of when I first tried this game on the Nintendo 64. In this day and age of higher-resolution graphics and sound effects, this title may appear blocky and unimpressive, but the core gameplay still withstands the test of time. Those willing to give this title a test flight will not be disappointed.

Nhan-Fiction Score: 4/5

‘Shutter Island’ delivers nerve-wracking but enjoyable experience

Review by Oliver Ryder from The Daily Evergreen

This is one island where many moviegoers would not mind being stranded on.

Heads v. Feds: A debate on the legalization of marijuana visits WSU

The great debate is finally reaching WSU.

Steve Hagar, editor in cheif of High Times Magazine and Robert M. Stutman, former Drug Enforcement Administration veteran will debate the legalization of marijuana on Wednesday, February 24 in the WSU Compton Union Building Senior Ballroom. The event will be hosted by the Student Entertainment Board, one of WSU’s registered student organizations.

The debate will be mediated by SEB’s Lecture’s Programmer Rachelle Rosonitz and will last about 30 mintues with discussion and rebuttals from each speaker. The debate will be followed by questions from the audience.

This event is free to students with valid WSU IDs and $5 for public. Doors will open at 5pm so get there early for a good seat. For more information click here.

WSU jazz ensembles head to Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival

Photo courtesy of University of Idaho Web site

Members of the WSU jazz community, including individuals involved in VoJazz and the WSU Big Bands, will be performing at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival at the University of Idaho starting Wednesday, Feb. 24.  The Festival features performances from grade school, middle school, high school and college level jazz ensembles and soloists, with vocal and instrumental musicians.  The festival will also include performances by guest professionals in jazz music.

The annual festival has welcomed student performers since 1967, when has featured music greats such as Ella Fitzgerald, Al Grey, and Lionel Hampton.  Individuals partaking in the festival will perform for the audience, and then have the opportunity to participate in a workshop with a jazz professional, during which they will receive feedback and constructive criticism.

For more information on performance times, check out the festival schedule.  Performances start tomorrow and take place in the Kibbie Dome on the University of Idaho campus.  Tickets can be purchased through the University of Idaho Ticket Office at 208-885-7212 or toll-free at 1-88-88-UIDAHO, and prices range from $25 to roughly $40.  Stay tuned for future performances by VoJazz and the WSU Big Bands on campus.

WSU Faculty Artist Series: Dr. Sheila Converse

Photo courtesy of WSU Web site

WSU School of Music presents a concert featuring Dr. Sheila Converse, a mezzo-soprano and clinical assistant professor of vocal music, as part of the Faculty Artist Series.  The concert features Dr. Converse and pianist Meg Kelley, as well as cellist Dr. Ruth Boden and artist Richard Kriehn, performing folk songs arranged by classical composers.  The concert will be held in the Bryan Hall Theatre at 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 23.  The event is free for WSU students with a student ID, and $10 for general admission.

For more information about the Faculty Artist Series, click here.  Stay posted for future events through the WSU School of Music.

A Science Fiction Classic Preserved

Fritz Lang’s complete version of Metropolis was screened at the Berlin Film Festival on February 12. The event marked the first time audiences saw Metropolis in its entirety since the premiere…83 years ago.

The film was a critical and financial disaster in 1927. Paramount decided it was best to cut an hour from the running time for American audiences. The cut scenes were supposed to be lost.

Film historians and fans all over got word that the missing footage of Metropolis was found in Buenos Aires in 2008. Roger Ebert called it “One of the the most important film archival discoveries in history.”

Metropolis will have a limited theatrical run in April and a dvd and blu-ray release is inevitable. Check out this link for more info.

Cable 8 to hold a telethon for one local student

By Shelby Gremel
The Daily Evergreen

Cable 8 Productions will be hosting a telethon from noon to 3 p.m. this Thursday to benefit one local middle schooler and his goal of one day going to college.

Kwina Schaible-Bliesner, an eighth-grader at Lincoln Middle School, lost his mother to cancer last summer and his father was also diagnosed with cancer and medically discharged from the military recently.

The fundraiser is part of the Cougar Vision Outreach Program, and the money raised will be put in a college fund for Kwina, or Ki to his friends.

By starting a college fund, Schaible-Bliesner will be one step closer to fulfilling his father’s wish: for his son to attend college or some form of higher education, said Raquel Marcelo, sales and marketing vice president for Cable 8 Productions, in an e-mail.

The telethon will consist of two simultaneous parts.

The first will be a live airing in Studio A where the actual telethon will be taped, directed by Michael DeTerra, a junior communication major and vice president of television at Cable 8. The second portion will be in the CUB Lair.

There will be performances from the Hawaii Club, acoustic performers Cassie Correlle, Kate-Lynne Logan and Ian Skavdahl as well as the elementary and middle school jazz choirs. Most of the performances, such as the Hawaii Club and the jazz choirs, will be taped in the studio and aired in the CUB Lair between the live performances. The acoustic singers will be performing live in the CUB Lair on Thursday.

Panda Express will also be participating in the Telethon. 20 percent of their proceeds Thursday will go to Schaible-Bliesner’s fund. Cable 8 also pre-sold T-shirts for the event for $15 each. All proceeds of the T-shirt sales will go to to Schaible-Bliesner as well. The shirts can be purchased online at http://mybiggive.com/gear/default.aspx or in the CUB Wednesday and Thursday. Students who purchase a shirt and wear it to Valhalla will receive 25 percent off of all food items and a microbrew pitcher for $9.75, limited to one per person per day.

MyBigGive is also looking to sell the shirts in bulk to groups.

Gardens come to University of Idaho

By Amanuel Yihdego
The Daily Evergreen

Grab your shovel – the Environmental Club at the University of Idaho is building the Vandal Community Garden, which will available to community members to grow their own herbs, flowers and vegetables.

The group is hoping to receive donations of gardening tools, top soil and dirt, compost, any kind of seeds, lumber and any other possible donation for students and community members to use on their plots.

“You probably don’t have a shovel in your dorm room,” said Danie Merriman, vice president of the E-Club and sophomore environmental science major.

The group plans to rent out the tools needed, such as shovels, and provide a hose for participants to water their plants.

“Environmental Club is in need of everything that goes along with gardening,” said Aaron Malgren, a sophomore business administration major and member of the E-Club.

The garden is a 4.5 ft. by 20 ft. piece of land located north of Living Learning Center courtyard at 1080 6th St. Moscow and the bed is going to be raised off the ground. Portions are available to claim immediately.

The E-Club has been working toward building a garden since October but was unable to due to winter temperatures. As the weather warms up, the group plans to break ground in March.

The project is the result of four organizations working together. E-Club, Sustainability Center, University Housing and Facilities Services.

The project is being funded largely by a sustainability grant. One of the grant’s requirements is to provide a learning opportunity. Merriman said the goal of the garden is to get the community involved and teach people who normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow vegetables and herbs.

The E-Club meets 5:30 p.m. every Tuesday at Morrill Hall 202 at the University of Idaho and is open to anyone who is interested.

‘The Wolfman’ is a howling bad time

By Oliver Ryder
The Daily Evergreen

It’s currently a very depressing time to be a film columnist. I can’t pretend my job is in any way grinding me down to despair.

However, it seems like the annual winter film slump is in full force in 2010 with films I was actually looking forward to turning out to be dreadful.

On paper, “The Wolfman” had just about everything going for it: a stellar cast, great looking trailer and the brilliantly bloody legacy of the Wolfman monster to see this film weathering any storm. The production hell that this film endured that saw endless reshoots, drastic cutting and the ultimate insult: the original director walked and was replaced by the guy who directed “Honey, I Shrunk The Kids.”

Wow, what a safe pair of hands to leave a horror legacy with, Universal Studios!

To put it simply, this film is a disaster from start to finish. It’s the type of film that leaves you gobsmacked (really shocked) that the studio allowed this to escape the editing floor, or to put it another way: This film is one sick puppy that should have been put to sleep (apologies, the puns must stop!).

So the story, Benicio del Toro is Lawrence Talbot, an actor returning to his childhood home in Cliché-ville, England, after his brother has been mauled by “some creature” (yes, the clue is in the title, ladies and gentlemen). He visits the grieving cardboard box of an actress – with the power of speech that calls itself Emily Blunt – and his father, Anthony Hopkins, who acts very strangely from the start. I can liken “The Wolfman” to last year’s “Public Enemies,” where a director clearly does not know how to handle his cast and ends up making them all look ridiculous, especially when the actors seem like onscreen is the last place they want to be.

As this film is set in the early 19th century, you would have thought that legends such as the Wolfman were largely unknown, and that to appear convincing, this adaptation would seek to be an origins story. Quite the opposite. In the local pub, all the villagers seems to be top of the range lycanthropy scholars, knowing how to kill it, what the full moon does and with some truly amazing powers of drunken perception instantly realize that the wolf is del Toro. Mind you, you can’t blame the villagers for wanting to be prepared, as in this film there appears to be a full moon every single night to keep with the film’s brutally strong grip on reality, *ahem.*

If I ever had to see this film again, I would make note to break out a stopwatch for how long a scene lasts. I can also guarantee that every single one is less than five minutes long. This therefore destroys any character development whatsoever (unaided by an award-winningly awful script), pace or suspense, and well you just don’t care about the plight of anyone in this film. It was clearly the work of studio executives having no idea what they were doing in the editing room, slicing gaping chunks out of this film to make it feel like half of it is missing. Not all of us subscribe to the ADD generation way of thinking that a film becomes dull if there isn’t blood or some robot beating up another robot every 10 seconds, Universal Studios.

On that note, the “action” is almost nonexistent, there are about four werewolf scenes with some truly appalling CGI that flashes across the screen so we can barely see what’s going on. About the only good “The Wolfman” can do is demonstrate that there should be restrictions put on CGI to actually make films be inventive again. The whole thing ends with a “twist” that will surprise no one and a stupid monster versus monster smackdown. “Van Helsing” did it as tongue-in-cheek adventure romp, “The Wolfman” actually wants to be taken seriously.

In final summary, it is clear the director’s pathetically desperate attempt to join the big boy leagues of recent horror legend adaptations such as Coppola’s “Dracula” or Burton’s “Sleepy Hollow” has failed and failed miserably. It feels like the last-minute assignment of someone told to make a great werewolf film only to rush through the Wikipedia summaries of “An American Werewolf In London” and “The Hound of The Baskervilles” and stitch them together to make this ugly mutt of a movie.

When it comes to film reviews, my bark is as bad as my bite.

Little People, Big Campus

Photo courtesy of Amy Roloff's official Web site

Amy Roloff, best known for her involvement on the popular TLC show ‘Little People, Big World’, heads to WSU next week for a speech, sponsored by the WSU Disability Awareness Association and the Residence Hall Association.  Roloff will be speaking about living with a disability in society, what the future holds for those who are disabled, and what it’s like to be a parent.  The event will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 17.  It will take place in the CUB Senior Ballroom, with an entrance fee of $3 or the donation of a non-perishable food item, all of which will be donated to the Pullman Community Action Center. For more information about the event, look for ads posted around campus.

The next season of Roloff’s show, which chronicles the life of her family on their farm in Portland, Ore., is set to air in April.