BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
Twenty-four years after the commercially successful television show, “Power Rangers” has been rebooted to a new continuity, but at the same level of quality as the originals. Continue reading ““Power Rangers:” Same Cheese, Different Decade”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
In February, the University of Alaska published a report from the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program (ANSEP) and UAA about the disconnect between Alaska high school grade point averages and college preparedness.
This report, which analyzed the 37 schools with 10 years of graduation data and 10 or more graduates enrolling in a University of Alaska school in 2015, found that approximately 61 percent of all Alaskan students attending UA require developmental classes. Continue reading “Alaska’s Developmental Classes Endemic”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
It’s doubtful anybody was suspecting that comedian Jordan Peele, best known for his work on the Comedy Central show Key & Peele, would ever decide to make a horror movie, although anybody familiar with his work might have a guess as to its content.
“Get Out” is, very plainly, a movie with a lot to say about modern race relations in the United States. It doesn’t, however, go after the expected target. Continue reading ““Get Out:” A Horror Film for Modern Racism”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
“They Don’t Talk Back” endeared itself to me as soon as I stepped foot into Perseverance Theater.
The set design was incredible. It more than accomplished its job of looking like a medium-sized house in a small Southeast Alaska village. The attention to detail impressed me; a small piece of carpet was duct taped to the wooden floor to be used for drying feet, for example, or the unlabeled cardboard box where one of the leads keeps their NES cartridges. One of the bedrooms doesn’t even have a door, just a hanging sheet. I can’t tell you how many times I saw stuff like that in my time in the villages. Continue reading “A Play for Alaska, About Alaska”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
Probably the hottest burning question about “Logan” was whether or not it benefited from its R rating. The answer is yes. Wolverine finally got to go claws out, lopping off limbs like an eight-year-old playing Fruit Ninja. But perhaps the most impressive part of the action sequences in “Logan” is how unimpressive they are. Logan, deprived of his healing factor and being slowly poisoned by his adamantium-plated bones, is well-described by IGN as “no longer a claws-baring superhero but an aging shadow of his former self.” Every fight scene featuring him is a stressful, painful affair. It seems that, at any time, he might finally be beaten, crumpling to the ground and ending the movie immediately, even outside of battle. This adds investment and stakes to Logan that are, in this cinematic moment, almost foreign to the superhero genre. Continue reading ““Logan:” The “Last Stand” We Needed”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
I probably don’t have to tell you, but DC superhero movies are in a bad spot right now. We haven’t seen a really good one since 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” Movies for kids are in even worse shape, with app adaptations, suspiciously similar premises, and franchises based around tiny yellow idiots. With this in mind, I was understandably nervous about a hundred-minute expansion film based on a gag from “The Lego Movie.” Continue reading “The “Lego Batman” We Deserve”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
On Feb. 10, UAS put on a production of Eve Ensler’s feminist play “The Vagina Monologues” as part of the V-Day movement, which seeks to end violence against women.
V-Day was also created by Ensler, and started as a nationwide group of performances of “The Vagina Monologues” on Feb. 14, 1998. The performances were royalty-free, and proceeds benefited women suffering from violence and sexual abuse. It became international a few years later, eventually spawning the One Billion Rising movement – the “one billion” in reference to the statistic that one in three women are beaten or raped in their lifetime. One Billion Rising has organized protests in over 100 countries. Continue reading ““The Vagina Monologues” at UAS”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
Damien Chazelle’s La La Land impresses with spectacular style and seems destined to bring musicals back into the mainstream.
Now, I’m not a musical person. I got my varsity letter playing the cymbals at high school basketball games. The only contemporary musicals I’m familiar with are the musical episodes of TV shows, and the title was the best music pun I could think of, so I wasn’t sure if this was the movie for me. After it was nominated for fourteen Academy Awards and blew up the Internet with its ending, I decided to give it a try. Continue reading “La La Land Shivers with Syncopation”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
WARNING: Due to the nature of this film (an M. Night Shyamalan thriller), this review contains major spoilers. Proceed at your own caution.
After more than a decade of laughably terrible movies, M. Night Shyamalan returns in more-or-less glorious fashion with Split. The premise of the movie is as simple as it is scientifically inaccurate: three teenaged girls are kidnapped by Kevin, a man with dissociative identity disorder (which, as a psychology student, I feel mandated to tell you probably doesn’t exist), and locked in his horrific murder basement as a sacrifice for his hidden, twenty-fourth personality, the Beast. If that name makes you giggle, this is not a movie for you. Continue reading “Split Divides Opinions”
BY DYLYN PETERSON
Staff Writer, UAS Whalesong
After seventeen years and a trilogy of disappointments, Star Wars finally gave us something worth watching set before A New Hope. Continue reading “Rogue One: A Prequel Actually Worth Watching”
