Oscar for "Best Trailer," then director Zack Snyder would have a couple of gleaming trophies sitting on his mantle. Back in the 1960s and 1970s, trailers used to be four minutes long, voiced over by a dude who sounded like he had emphysema and summarized the entire plot of the film.Enter the recently deceased Don LaFontaine: Using his deep iconic voice, LaFontaine single-handedly revolutionized the trailer concept. Since then trailers have become much tighter, featuring quick, exciting montages and samples of some of the best scenes from the film in an effort to garner audience interest. Snyder has absolutely perfected this method.
Taking the adage "what you give is what you get" literally, Hanszen College beat out the competition last week by claiming victory in the Senior Gift Giving challenge.Hanszen senior Ted Wieber said a number of different factors pushed Hanszen to lead the competition.
Thresher takes third in convention
The men's tennis team has not always had the best luck playing doubles. Despite owning a singles set that has clinched top 30 rankings throughout the decade, the doubles teams have consistently hung like a cloud over the beginning of each match, creating question marks that always mocked Rice's progress.But this year seems to be different. After one of the Owls' top players, 49th-ranked junior Bruno Rosa, faltered early on, and junior Chong Wang, the third-best Owl, departed due to off-court issues, Rice's singles play has been marked by relative struggles.
Junior pitcher Ryan Berry needed only a week of warming up to get the offseason rust out of his system. Bouncing back from a disappointing performance against California Polytechnic State University in the baseball team's season opener, Berry, Conference USA Pitcher Of the Week, pitched a complete-game shutout against formerly top-ranked Texas A&M University two weeks ago at the Minute Maid College Classic. Last Saturday, he followed up with an almost identical performance against Notre Dame University in Rice's own Academy Sports and Outdoors Rice Classic tournament.
Start planning jacks, filling water balloons and pumping air in your tires: Willy Week begins Monday and will culminate with Beer Bike on Saturday, March 21. The theme of this year's Willy Week, which is organized by the Rice Program Council, is WhataWilly Week, a spin off of the Whataburger fast-food chain. T-shirts will be on sale for $5 throughout the week.
The Beer Bike track in the Greenbriar lot was temporarily closed after an accident occurred on Feb. 25, B.J. Almond, Director of the Office of News and Media Relations, said. The track closed officially on Feb. 27 for spring break and reopened March 9 for bikers. Almond said a student biking on the track collided with a car that was crossing the track but had stopped when the driver saw the cyclists.
Two freshman starting pitchers-Texas's Austin Dicharry of Klein Collins High School and Rice's Matthew Reckling of Kinkaid-went to high school less than 20 miles from one another in the Houston area but ended up facing each other last Tuesday night. Fourth-ranked Rice took on longtime rival University of Texas, which, according to Baseball America, is the best team in the nation.
The recent tuition hike, announced by President David Leebron on Wednesday, comes with a mixed welcome (see story, page 1). On the one hand, we are pleased to see the university implementing a tuition increase that, percentage-wise, is less than the increases of recent years, and is considerably less than the 14 percent increase instituted of a few years ago. In such an economic climate, we are happy that the administration is taking students' financial needs into consideration, namely with the increase of the loan threshold to $80,000 for the incoming class. Additionally, it is commendable to see that Rice's 2009 percentage increase is less than almost all comparable universities outside of the Ivy League.However, we are worried by the fact that, in the last decade, our tuition has nearly doubled. What was once a selling point - Rice offering a comparable education for pennies on the dollar - has become lore. Even though we can still compare ourselves to other schools who are also increasing their tuitions, the national trend of staggering tuition increases affects us, and is more than a bit troubling. It has to end somewhere, and we hope that end is in sight.
The men's tennis team has not always had the best luck playing doubles. Despite owning a singles set that has clinched top 30 rankings throughout the decade, the doubles teams have consistently hung like a cloud over the beginning of each match, creating question marks that always mocked Rice's progress. But this year seems to be different. After one of the Owls' top players, 49th-ranked junior Bruno Rosa, faltered early on, and junior Chong Wang, the third-best Owl, departed due to off-court issues, Rice's singles play has been marked by relative struggles.
In these times of economic crisis, the safest place to invest your money may be the newly-formed Owl Investment Group. Founded by Martel college sophomore Chris Kopczynski, the Owl Investment Group seeks to give Rice students hands-on experience in investing and provides financial news to students.
In the Feb. 27 issue, a graphic on page 8 mistakenly listed Jackie Ammons, Kelsey Zottnick and Andrew McElroy Patterson as Honor Council winners in their respective years. However, Honor Council Representatives are not selected based on the one with the highest votes. The elections were uncontested and allowed for multiple winners. The Thresher regrets the error.
Atieno Odhiambo, groundbreaking African history scholar and Rice professor of History for nearly two decades, died Feb. 25 after being diagnosed with a degenerative illness. He was 63. A contributor to 14 books as author, co-author and editor, Odhiambo also wrote countless articles and chapters concerning African historiography, colonialism and various aspects of historical development in East Africa.
Instead of basking in the tropical sun, over 100 students volunteered at various non-profit organizations throughout the country as part of Alternative Spring Break (ASB), which was sponsored by the Community Involvement Center. Eight groups of approximately 12 students worked in Colorado, Virginia, Mississippi, California, Washington, South Dakota, Illinois and Costa Rica, and one group of 40 volunteers visited Galveston. With an application pool twice the number of available spots, the selection process was highly competitive. Though participants were asked to pay a $250 registration fee, the rest of the money for the trips was raised by each team through special events and personal solicitations. Some groups chose to fundraise by holding a raffle for gift cards at nearby restaurants and stores, while others held bake sales or sold Valentine's goodies.
With tremendous productions like Urinetown (2007) and Hello, Hamlet! (2008), in recent years Wiess Tabletop Theater has established itself as the annual college musical theater powerhouse. But the reputation is double-edged: this year's production, West Side Story, carried with it fantastic potential and extraordinary expectations. When the stars align and all the gears within the production synchronize, the product is riveting. Unfortunately, these moments are spread too thin across the production's two-hour runtime. Wiess may have bitten off more than it can chew.West Side Story, written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, is a 1957 adaptation of Romeo and Juliet that replaces the feuding Montague and Capulet families with two Hell's Kitchen street gangs: the all-Anglo Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks. The show has become one of the more influential works in the history of American musical theater, largely because of the unprecedented complexity of its choreography and innovative music. Producing the show necessitates a fastidious attention to the details of its dancing and its music, and for the most part Wiess's production succeeds with only a few lapses.
If she were not wearing her hijab, most passersby might not notice that Fidelma O'Leary was a devout Muslim. O'Leary, who teaches neuroscience at St. Edward's Universtiy in Austin, spoke on campus last Tuesday, not about the intricacies of neurons, but about religion and her struggle as a converted Muslim. The lecture, entitled "A Muslim Woman's Jihad," is the first in the Islamica series sponsored by the Muslim Student Association.
With culturally explosive Austin a three-hour drive away, Houston's music scene has never quite taken off the way it potentially could.The main problem, as anyone who's seen Houston's sprawl can attest, is that the scene is way too spread out. Unlike Austin, where you can jump from venue to venue relatively easily and see multiple bands for cheap in one night, Houston requires a bit more effort.
HOUSTON -- Freshman third baseman Anthony Rendon went 4-for-5 with a home run and three RBI to lead a 15-hit Rice attack as the No. 4-ranked Owls baseball team defeated crosstown rival Houston 8-1 Wednesday night at UH's Cougar Field.The contest was not a Conference USA regular season game between the league rivals, but it did give the Blue & Gray a 2-0 lead in the annual best-of-five series for the Silver Glove Trophy as the city's collegiate champion. Rice won the first meeting between the teams by a score of 9-2 back on Feb. 25. The series resumes with three C-USA league games to be played at Cougar Field in early May.
They say good things come in threes. That maxim rings true for the Rice women's track team as the Owls won their third consecutive Conference USA Indoor championship Feb. 27-28 at University of Houston's Yeoman Fieldhouse. Not only did Rice win the meet, but the Owls scored more points (148) than in the previous two championships, beating out Houston (108) and the University of Central Florida (86).
