The James Logan Courier

By Abraham Rangel, Courier Staff Writer

Talib Kweli’s Gutter Rainbows was not much of a seller in the big markets, but it doesn’t take away the fact that the album was a well produced body of work.

Gutter Rainbows did not sell successfully in the mainstream, with only 19,000 copies sold. Most people judge an album’s success by the numbers of copies sold, not by its content. However, Kweli delivered his best with lyrics pertaining to controversial point of views, witty punch lines and clever metaphors.

By Dan DeLuca
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)

PHILADELPHIA — The British indie rock band Yuck were one of the breakout acts at the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin, Texas, last month. But lead singer Daniel Blumberg, the 21-year-old Londoner who stood to the far left of the capacious outdoor venue Stubb's during SXSW and sheepishly noted that the NPR Music showcase was the biggest gig of his group's young life, would prefer that the group not be known as a "buzz band."

"It is nice, when people talk about the band," says the guitarist, songwriter, and visual artist, who will be releasing a set of solo piano songs under the rubric Oupa in June. He was talking on his mobile phone last week as he walked the streets of San Francisco in search of a bookstore. ("I like bookshops more than record shops," he says.)

"But when we started, that wasn't really the aim. The goal is to make good music."

By Milto Ungashe, Courier Staff Writer

Imagine a world in which every year, 24 teenagers fight to the death, with only one victor remaining. This is the world which Suzanne Collins has created in her post apocalyptic novel, The Hunger Games, the first novel of a trilogy.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen lives in the nation of Panem—formerly North America—a country divided into twelve districts. Each year, the members of Panem’s city Capitol hold an annual televised event in which one boy and one girl from each district are chosen to fight to the death in an arena. These games are a part of the Capitol’s large plot to demonstrate the extent of its power of its citizens, and to prove that even the nation’s children cannot escape its control.

Collins’ novel is the first of a trilogy and echoes such novels as George Orwell’s 1984 and Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 452, in which the government seeks complete dominance. The barbaric nature of the games and the heartlessness of the people, who mindlessly watch them on their televisions, make it an infuriating experience to read about. And if that’s not enough, all of the twists and turns and unpredictable moments that Collins creates makes reading it incredibly brutal on the mind yet somehow so worth it.

By Arthell Cargill, Courier Staff Writer

Broken Date by RL Stine is the short yet thrilling tale of a girl named Jamie who lives a seemingly perfect life. She is completely in love with her poor yet sweet boyfriend Tom, and with her graduation looming ahead, life seems to be going her way. Unfortunately, things take a turn for the worse. Jamie is worried when Tom doesn't show up for their date to the roller skating rink.

To take her mind off of worrying about Tom, Jamie's best friend, Ann-Marie, a witty red haired girl, decides that a trip to the mall would be just what she needs. While shopping, Jamie witnesses a robbery which results in the murder of the shop clerk. When Jamie tries to get a closer look at the killer, she is astonished to discover that it is Tom.

By Betsy Sharkey
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — Ever wonder how a certain car, chip, beer, soap, well really just about any product known to man, got its 15 seconds in the movie spotlight? Money, of course, but that's just the price of getting into the game. Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock is out to show you all the distasteful bits, raw and unprocessed, that go into making that manipulative commercial sausage in his new absurdist comic documentary (mockumentary?) "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold."

Or more precisely, "Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," a title that exemplifies the very thin line between art and commerce that Spurlock attempts not to cross while telling all. The pomegranate juice company paid around $1 million for those naming rights, a couple of actual commercials embedded in the movie and major screen time. Despite the transparency and full disclosure, and the sardonic tone detailing it, something gets lost as the distance between filmmaker and subject disappears — I think we call it objectivity.

From wikipedia:
Julius Sterling Morton (April 22, 1832 – April 27, 1902) was a Nebraska editor who served as President Grover Cleveland's Secretary of Agriculture. He was a prominent Bourbon Democrat, taking the conservative position on political, economic and social issues, and opposing agrarianism. In 1897 he started a weekly magazine entitled The Conservative.
Biography

Morton was born in Adams, Jefferson County, New York. He was raised in Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan. He was a member of Chi Psi Fraternity at Michigan. After receiving his diploma in 1854, he moved with his bride, Caroline Joy French, to Nebraska, which was not yet organized as a territory, and staked a claim in Nebraska City. Soon after arriving at Nebraska City, Morton became the editor of the local newspaper, the Nebraska City News. Morton served in the Nebraska Territorial House of Representatives in 1855-1856. He was then appointed Secretary of Nebraska Territory by President James Buchanan on July 12, 1858, which he served as until 1861. He also served as Acting Governor from December 5, 1858, to May 2, 1859.

Learn more about Arbor Day at the Arbor Day Foundation website.

By Manya Brachear
Chicago Tribune (MCT)

CHICAGO — As Christians prepare to commemorate Christ's ultimate sacrifice on the cross and celebrate his resurrection, Lady Gaga fans are celebrating "Judas," the artist's newest song named for the man who betrayed Jesus.

The latest single off the album "Born this Way," which talks about confronting one's inner demons and hopelessly loving the wrong man, was supposed to come out five days before Easter. But leaks on the Internet forced an earlier release last Friday.

By Faiza Elmasry, VOA News
Though he has covered wars and conflicts, journalist Peter Godwin wasn't prepared for the surreal mix of desperation and hope he encountered when he returned to Zimbabwe, his broken homeland, in 2008.

After ruling for nearly 30 years, President Robert Mugabe finally lost an election. However, instead of conceding power, he launched a brutal campaign of terror to stay in office. With most foreign correspondents banned, Godwin was one of the few observers to bear witness to the period locals call "The Fear." His new memoir recounts that experience.

Liberators' old boys' club
Mugabe led a civil war against the white minority government in Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known then. Since its independence in 1980, the eloquent, highly educated 87-year-old has been the country’s only president.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

At least nowadays, "Crysis 2" is a rare breed of first-person shooter. It tells a thoroughly epic story over 12 hours instead of four and within a single game instead of across a cliffhanger-riddled trilogy. Rather than start furiously and plateau, it also continually gets better as those hours pass.

Good thing, too, because the first two hours? Not so great.

The alien invasion of New York City eventually enters full bloom, but before you face it firsthand, you'll have to contend with a private military that will kill you for your nanotechnological armor, which affords you superhuman physical abilities and the limited ability to cloak yourself and become nearly invincible.

ISBN-10: 0393069621

Mike O'Sullivan, VOA News

The fictional Chinese-American detective Charlie Chan was the subject of popular books and movies for many decades. In recent years, however, the character has been criticized as a stereotyped caricature of Asian-Americans.

Author Yunte Huang says that’s not the case. He has explored the character and real-life policeman who inspired him in the book "Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and his Rendezvous With American History."

Charlie Chan has been a familiar character to readers and film-goers, beginning in the 1920s. The globe-trotting detective solved crimes in more than 40 films through the 1940s, and with the advent of television, found a new audience in the 1950s and 1960s.