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Brian Reinhart

NEWS 5/16/10 7:00pm

Sharon Jones, Dap-Kings' latest album is Dap-tasticthis

By Brian Reinhart

Author's note: Three major mp3 download websites, Amazon, eMusic and iTunes, each have exclusive bonus tracks, as does the vinyl release. This review was written based on the eMusic version of the album, with the bonus track "Call on God."Every once in a while, I get an urge to turn back the clock to the 1970s, back when soul and R&B ruled the charts, Afros were bigger than the heads they topped and James Brown was shouting, "Ain't it funky!"

NEWS 5/16/10 7:00pm

Graduation a bittersweet end, beginning

By Brian Reinhart

I have a bit of advice for underclassman readers: Find something about Rice you can learn to hate.Hopefully this will be easy. If you cannot hate Rice, though, at least get tired of it. Boredom, or even an itch to get out of here, will make graduation that much easier.

NEWS 4/22/10 7:00pm

Commentary: Astros come out of the gate whiffing

By Brian Reinhart

We knew it was going to be bad, but we did not expect this. The Houston Astros blasted off with the worst start in baseball, going winless for their first eight games but sitting, as this newspaper went to press, at a nicer record of 5-9. Already four games behind in the National League Central Division, the Astros are looking for answers. What went wrong?

NEWS 4/22/10 7:00pm

Out of the Park Baseball 11 complex but addictive

By Brian Reinhart

Out of the Park Baseball 11 is the Rice University of baseball video games. It's geeky and obsessed with statistics, and it lets you do nearly everything short of taking a swing yourself. OOTP 11 is a simulation game that puts the player in the position of general manager of a baseball team. As GM, you do not step into the batter's box and swing for the fences. Instead, the game focuses on managing the team, negotiating trades, promoting minor leaguers and building a playoff dynasty.

NEWS 4/15/10 7:00pm

"Spirituality" arbitrary, losing meaning

By Brian Reinhart

Most people agree that spirituality is a good thing - even essential to our human experience. Pundits worry that people are not satisfying their spiritual needs, and the Rice Student Association recently hopped on the bandwagon with a survey assessing resources for students' spiritual health.And, for the first time, there is now a distinction between faith and spirituality: More and more people tell researchers, "I'm not religious, but I am spiritual." Elaine Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice, conducted a study and found that 20 percent of atheist scientists still describe themselves as having "spirituality."

NEWS 3/18/10 7:00pm

VADA Theatre's The Bug all laughs, no glitches

By Brian Reinhart

A computer bug leads four office employees on a search for a missing co-worker in The Bug, the Rice Visual and Dramatic Arts Department's spring play. The Bug may be modest in length, plot and ambition, but it delivers the laughs in a thoroughly enjoyable corporate comedy of errors.The Bug is a small-scale play; it is only an hour and a half long, and it consists of a single long scene in one room, with an intermission in the middle. There are only four characters, and the play follows their conversations over the course of a rather atypical morning at the Chicago offices of Jericho, Inc.

NEWS 3/11/10 6:00pm

Polanski serves up some tense suspense with The Ghost Writer

By Brian Reinhart

The first scene of The Ghost Writer feels like something from a Hitchcock movie: A passenger goes missing from the ferry to Martha's Vineyard, and his body is found washed up on the beach. In scenes to come, the movie will allude to modern politics and rely on a car's GPS system for a valuable clue, but The Ghost Writer is still an homage to Hitchcock's mode of storytelling. This is an old-fashioned suspense movie updated for a new century. Ewan McGregor (Angels and Demons) stars as a professional ghost writer whose name is never mentioned. The writer is assigned to pen the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Die Another Day's Pierce Brosnan). The last ghost writer to try to write Lang's life story-well, his body is the one that washed up on the beach.

NEWS 2/18/10 6:00pm

Online only: Pop culture too uptight, serious

By Brian Reinhart

A few weeks ago, I walked into a 1950s-style diner named Cheesy Jane's and ordered a burger, onion rings and chocolate shake. Above my table, a model train coasted along a track suspended from the ceiling. A different song began to play on the oldies radio station, and the singer asked a series of questions I hadn't heard in years: "Who put the bomp in the bomp ba bomp? Who put the ram in the rama lama ding dong? Who put the bop in the bop she bop? Who put the dip in the dip da dip da dip?"

NEWS 2/18/10 6:00pm

Commentary: Ineptitude starts at top of Astros' organization

By Brian Reinhart

When Pittsburgh Pirates fans feel sorry for you, you know your team is bad. The Pirates are in many ways the worst franchise in baseball. The last time a Pirates team had a winning record was in 1992, when George H.W. Bush was president and most current Rice students were still learning how to count. So, when a Pittsburgh sports blog called the Bucs Dugout posted an entry called, "Schadenfreude: Your 2010 Astros," it was obvious that the Houston Astros were in trouble. Pirates fans are experts in bad baseball.

NEWS 1/28/10 6:00pm

Eyeing the Oscars: Brian picks his favorite flicks from 2009

By Brian Reinhart

On Tuesday, all eyes will be on Hollywood as the 2010 Academy Award nominees are announced. Ten movies may be set to be nominated for Best Picture - not five, as in years past - but that does not mean there is any less debate about the ballot. Which movie will take home the top honors?Who were the best actors and actresses of the last year? And is there any category in which Avatar will not be nominated? What follows is a summary of the best movies of 2009 in two parts. At the end, I name some probable Oscar winners and a few movies which might receive surprise nominations. But first I list my five favorite films of the last year -I'll leave the debate about the 10 best to others. These are not necessarily predictions of which films will get Best Picture nominations; instead, read them as one avid moviegoer's attempt to sort out his favorites from a great year at the movies.

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