The James Logan Courier

By Amandeep Singh and Maria Saldana, Courier Staff Writers
Editor's Note: Two of our writers went to see this movie. After the overview see their opinions below.

Movie Overview:
A teenage boy named Nathan Harper, played by Taylor Lautner, who has had weird dreams as long as he can remember. One day he comes across a photograph on what he and his across-the-street neighbor, Karen, payed by Lily Collins, believes to be is a missing persons website. The photograph was of himself as a boy and this made him wonder who exactly who his real parents are. The woman who raised him as her own son Mara Harper, played by Maria Bello, confirmed to him the harsh reality that her and his believed to be dad, Kevin Harper, Jason Isaacs, were not his real parents.

By Zohal Sharif, Courier Staff Writer

Shalimar, on Walnut Avenue in Fremont, has a gold standard for desi food which is Indian-esque. The menu seriously saved this place from being one of the craziest places to dine. The food is good but restaurant is very chaotic and filthy.

By Jack Bragg, Courier Entertainment Editor

Rarely does a new band build so much hype as to have their first single played on radio stations worldwide. Grouplove, a new American indie band, has garnered so much attention that their first single has already made it to mainstream radio a mere week after the release of their debut album, Never Trust A Happy Song. Their is method to the madness behind this band’s hype. The album is well constructed and feels like a methodical professional production without the “new band” feel. The album feels familiar without giving up its surprising elements that make it a truly unique album.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

For all who thought "Resistance 2" was a case of a game losing its nerve and simply fitting in, "Resistance 3" has good news: It agrees.

That carry-two-weapon-at-a-time limit from "R2?" It's gone. Outside of one story-mandated occurrence, when you find a weapon, it's yours to keep — to the eventual tune of a 12-weapon cache that's easy to manage and so much more fun to maneuver than the convenient but boring two-weapon maximum.
If you're familiar with developer Insomniac — masterminds of "Ratchet and Clank" as well as "Resistance" — you also know weapon design is their forte. "R3's" magnum isn't just a pistol: Its bullets also explode when you pull a secondary trigger. The stock rifle can tag enemies and pelt them from around corners with homing bullets, and the already-dangerous Atomizer's secondary function creates what is, by any other name, a black hole. Every firearm in "R3" has some bonus ingenuity in its standard or alternate fire modes, and you can upgrade each twice — simply by using them — to do even more outlandishly useful things.

By Jessica Li, Courier Staff Writer

If you want to do something fun, educational, and free with family, friends, or even guests, look no further than the Union City Library.

Alongside the Contra Costa Library, the Alameda County Library system, of which the Union City Library is a part, offers Discover & Go, a new service that gives Library card-holders who are also Alameda County residents free or discount passes to cultural institutions and local museums. People can learn new things, explore, question, create interest, and more.

By Carrie Rickey
The Philadelphia Inquirer (MCT)

PHILADELPHIA — Lately Jonah Hill, the potty-mouthed teddy bear of "Superbad," resembles a stuffed animal that's lost its stuffing and gained muscle tone.

Did Hill shed those pounds by running the bases on the set of "Moneyball"? In the movie that opened Friday he is Peter Brand, statistics wonk, a composite of all the real-life wonks who helped Oakland Athletics manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) spot baseball players with high on-base percentages and low salaries.

By Jack Bragg, Courier Entertainment Editor

Irvine-based alternative rock band Thrice have once again returned with their seventh record, Major/Minor.

The album is loud and features complex rhythms and melodies but at the same time tends to sound too familiar to previous albums. The sound is very similar and the songs as individual pieces could be placed on any other Thrice album from the last few years and would feel in sync without a noticeable difference. This quality to the music brings mixed feelings as the new songs feel familiar and don’t stray too far from the sound that made Thrice as a band what they are today, at the same time, the new songs also don’t seem to add another layer to the bands music. They seem to be another issue of the same old music, as though an older album had a b-side that was only discovered recently.

Rosanne Skirble, VOANews

Polls in recent years show that fewer Americans believe global warming is a threat or that it is driven by human activities.

That’s despite consensus among scientists that climate change is not only very real, but also that it is caused largely by the burning of fossil fuels in cars, trucks and power plants.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Give "Rise of Nightmares" an A for effort and an A+ for conviction. It marks a stark change of scenery (gruesome, story-driven horror instead of family-friendly minigames) for Kinect, it's the first Kinect game to give players full range of motion, and it takes both breakthroughs and runs pretty wild with them.

Far more subjective is the grade it deserves for execution. It might impress you, it might bewilder or aggravate you. Or it might make perfect sense, because if there's a genre where control inhibitions are an arguable asset, horror is it.

Though "Nightmares'" walking controls are predictably odd, the game — which plays out from a first-person perspective — at least makes them simple to understand. Standing still and facing forward keeps you still. Turning your torso left or right turns you onscreen, and putting a foot forward or backward and keeping it there sends you walking in that direction until you bring your foot back.

By Kayleen Garingan, Courier Staff Writer

While in Reno, Nevada my family and I decided to go to the annual Nugget Rib Cook-off. The 24th annual "Best in the West" Nugget Rib Cook-off ran over the Labor Day weekend.

Not knowing what to expect, the smells of smoke and barbeque sauce engulfed our noses and power struck our taste buds. The smells of barbequed meat were absolutely delicious.

By Randy Lewis
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

LOS ANGELES — Nick Lowe, lauded in many quarters as one of pop music's master craftsmen of the last three decades, says he hears a lot of pretty good music these days. And that's not good.

"Sad to say, it seems everyone can make a pretty good record in their bedroom today," the 62-year-old English singer and songwriter said recently. "You go buy the kit and you can make a pretty good record. 'Pretty good' is the new 'terrible.' In a tsunami of 'pretty good' stuff, you can't find the really good stuff. So I've kind of given up looking."

By Adam Phillips
VOA News

We tend to create new words to describe our changing world. WIRED magazine’s Jargon Watch editor Jonathon Keats attempts to guide us through the thicket of emerging terms in his book, “Virtual Words.”

Keats, who tracks such terms for WIRED, offers “spam” as one now-familiar example. It was first used as a brand name for canned luncheon meat but has come to mean the unwanted email that clutters our in-boxes.

“The term came about because "spam," being junk e-mail, and Spam luncheon meat many consider to be junk food, there was a resonance between the two," Keats says. "So that people began to call their junk email "spam." Spam was a term that people could rally around and they could rally against this email they didn’t want.”

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

After Sony rounded the Playstation 2 "God of War" games into a terrific Playstation 3 compilation two years ago, it was all but written that this two-pack, which brings the series' two Playstation Portable entrants to the bigger screen, would someday follow.

But if you never played those games the first time around, "God of War: Origins Collection" represents more than simply a nice effort on Sony's part to make the entirety of the franchise available on one system. It also — thanks to the efforts of a developer that wasn't afraid to leave its mark on a series it didn't create — allows those who don't own a PSP to see the series in a slightly but noticeably different light.

It's a Lulu by Lulu Zhong, Courier Staff Artist


Twisted by Rae Atabay, Courier Staff Artist

By Steven Zeitchik
Los Angeles Times (MCT)

TORONTO — In June 2009, just a few days before Brad Pitt, director Steven Soderbergh and others were set to board a plane for Phoenix to begin shooting the film version of Michael Lewis' baseball best-seller "Moneyball," the unthinkable happened. Despite the months spent preparing the shoot and the star wattage involved, Sony Pictures Co-Chairman Amy Pascal pulled the plug on the movie. Soderbergh was leaving the project, the studio announced, and the film's future was in serious doubt.

By Jack Bragg, Courier Entertainment Editor

It’s not often that a band comes along with a truly spectacular debut that immediately grasps the listener upon hearing the songs for the first time. Now, the Welsh band The Joy Formidable has done just that with their debut album, The Big Roar.

A clashing of noise and ambient undertones creates a truly ethereal album that will, song after song, keep you hooked. Each song breeds an entirely different feel, whilst simultaneously allowing the listener to create a seemingly personal familiarity. As a whole, the album is a hard rock fairytale that gives each individual song significance, whilst at the same time, giving the album as a whole a collective story to tell.

By Arthel Cargill, Courier Staff Writer

Melissa Kantor brings to light the struggles of growing up and finding true love in If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?, whimsical, but realistic, story of love. High school sophomore Lucy Norton is dragged to Long Island when her father marries interior designer extraordinaire Mara Gilman.

Along with a controlling new mother, Lucy welcomes two bratty twin stepsisters into her life. As if this is not enough, Lucy is invisible at school and at home, only finding comfort when she is painting. Her life is turned upside down when Connor Pearson, a senior and the captain of the basketball team, asks her to be his girlfriend after overhearing her knowledgeable comments on basketball, which is one of her main passions.

Her newfound social acceptance, spurred by her big-man-on-campus boyfriend, leads Lucy into the whirl of high school activities such as the prom, wild parties and kissing.

By Tish Wells
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

There is much talk about, and invoking of, the U.S. Constitution these days. But how was it really built? Who were the men who signed it? What was really important to them in that steamy summer of 1787 in Philadelphia where they gathered to debate a new Constitution?

In "Signing their Rights Away," Denise Kiernan and Joseph D'Agnese introduce you to the men behind the Constitution Convention and the pressures they faced, both political and personal. It also clearly illustrates the compromises that led to shaping of the document.

In the introduction, the authors lay the scene. The War of Independence is over and the Articles of Confederation weren't doing the job of holding the new country together. So the word went out for a revision.

By Joseph Agharanya, Courier Staff Writer

WolfTeam is a free, fast-paced 3D "massively multiple online first person shooter" (MMOFPS) that allows players to transform between playing as a human or as a werewolf. The game can be downloaded at either www.wolfteam.softnyx.net or www.aeriagames.com.

In the game, humans have an assortment of weapons available at their disposal, giving them an advantage in distance. Wolves, on the other hand, have little to no ranged attacks but are quicker and stronger than their human counter parts.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

If you wanted to love "No More Heroes" on the Wii but couldn't get around its logistical roadblocks, the least interesting news about this overdue port may also be its best news.

Before we continue, let's restate that: "No More Heroes: Heroes' Paradise" is a port of the first "Heroes" game. The game's new developer and publishers haven't dramatically remixed it or spruced up what ailed it back in 2008, and while the graphics benefit greatly from the high-definition bump, that's exactly what they are —: a high-definition presentation of visual assets from the Wii version. It suffices just fine, in no small credit to a unique graphic style seen most commonly in motion comics, but you won't be floored.

By Roger Moore
The Orlando Sentinel (MCT)

Seven Tulane students plus two bayou rednecks plus scores of sharks plus 3-D add up to zero fun in "Shark Night 3D," the worst movie of the summer, arriving on the last weekend of the summer.

Director David R. Ellis has delivered a heartless, suspense-free 90 minutes of sharks dining out on kids stuck on an island in a Louisiana lake. It's one of those magical movie locations: There's no cell reception, and while the power grid serves the island-mansion where the Tulane seven hang out, nobody thought to install a land line. With conditions like these, it's no wonder Louisiana has to give away the store in incentives to get Hollywood to film there.

By Jim Harrington
Contra Costa Times (MCT)

OAKLAND, Calif. — There's an old joke that goes something like this, "How do you know that a Deadhead has stayed at your house?" Answer: "He's still there."
The Deadheads definitely are still in the house.

More than 15 years after Jerry Garcia, their spiritual leader, died and the Grateful Dead broke up, the colorful, iconic and oft-lampooned fan base remains one of the more loyal and potent commercial forces in popular culture. They flock to concerts by surviving Dead members such as Bob Weir and Phil Lesh and gobble up an ever-steady supply of archived concert recordings. Nowhere is this insatiable demand more apparent than in the latest release — "Europe '72: The Complete Recordings," due this month.