Duke: The movie

15 Apr 2009, Posted by Jeff Ditzler in Backpages, Jeff Ditzler, 0 Comments

This may be a bit surprising, given who the only president to have been a movie star was, but Hollywood and conservatives just don’t get along, with liberal themes dominating films from Milk to Good Night and Good Luck. Seeking to rectify the imbalance, AOL News columnist Matt Lewis has offered three right-leaning movie ideas.  The most entertaining by far is “Witness”, which involves a writer during the early Cold War who catches a Communist spy with the aid of papers hidden in a pumpkin.  N0, really, that actually happened.  You’d think nothing here at dear old Duke could compete with that, but Lewis’s third idea is everyone’s favorite event from recent Blue Devil history:

The Duke Lacrosse scandal was sobering [sic] look at the politics of race, gender, and class in the 21st Century…it still has blockbuster potential.

Lewis even suggests Kelsey Grammar for the role of Mike Nifong and, somewhat optimistically, predicts he’d win an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  Why stop there, though?  With the right movies, the 2014 Academy Awards could be a Duke sweep.

Best Foreign Film: Vzdycky, tam Scola (“Always, There Was Scola”)—In the tradition of Kafka, this Czech entry explores the ruined idealism and increasing existential madness of young television anchors who realize their fate is to appear on Duke Cable at 11 a.m. on Saturdays for students who (a) are nursing hangovers or (b) have forgotten to pay their cable bill.

Best Documentary Feature: K: The Movie, a dramatic reading of highlights from Coach K’s books, earned high marks despite some complaints that it was repetitive (“Enough with the fist already”—Roger Ebert’s cryogenically preserved head).  Reviewers were especially impressed with Dick Vitale’s cameo and Coach K’s scowl in the IMAX version.

Best Visual Effects: typotopia wins the award for its lavish depiction of a futuristic world in which all capital letters have been abolished.  The film marks miriam cooke’s directing debut.

Best Original Song: The Academy made a historic exception in this category.  The Pledge Week Movie took home the honor, even though the song involved wasn’t original.  Explained one Oscar voter, “Getting 500 sorority girls to sing ‘Don’t Stop Believin’” in unison would’ve been very impressive even if they weren’t plastered.”

Best Actress: Halle Berry picks up her second Oscar in this category for her portrayal of Oprah Winfrey in Commence This, a drama about the Duke Graduation Hostage Crisis of 2009, when Oprah, a key ally of then-President Barack Obama, was kidnapped by former GM executive Rick Wagoner, still upset over Obama dismissing him from General Motors, and a few other rogue trustees.  The scene in which Oprah saves Dr. Phil (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and the Navy SEAL team sent to rescue her is perhaps the most compelling of the year.

Best Actor: Carrot Top crowns a surprisingly successful venture into serious acting with an award for his title role in Munger, the epic story of the Duke professor who won a shocking upset in the 2010 U.S. Senate election after incumbent Sen. Richard Burr fell out of the Cape Hatteras lighthouse during a photo op.  Highlights of Mr. Top’s performance include his portrayal of Sen. Munger’s filibuster of the asparagus tongs industry bailout and the deal, brokered by Munger during the 2012 presidential campaign, that catapulted Vin Diesel into the White House.

(Columnist’s note: This is my final post on the Backpages.  If you want to read more of my semi-insightful opinions, you need a life and probably also psychiatric intervention.  Until you get those, you can read my blog at thebigditz.blogspot.com, which I may get around to updating after LDOC when I actually have time to do so.)

A tale of two cities

14 Apr 2009, Posted by Braden Hendricks in Backpages, Braden Hendricks, 0 Comments

I don’t know if it was obvious to my many faithful readers, but this past semester I have been studying in Los Angeles as part of the Duke in LA program. Since Duke doesn’t have a film major, and production classes are somewhat limited, I decided to take the opportunity to come out here and study film at University of Southern California and intern at a Hollywood production company.

It’s been a great time and I’ve seen a lot of very cool things, but I noticed that there are some ways in which Durham and Los Angeles are quite similar—particular the part of the city that USC’s campus is located in—South Central Los Angeles. For anyone not familiar with all the different subsections of the greater metropolis of LA—Beverly Hills, Hollywood, Westwood, Brentwood, Inglewood, Compton, etc.—South Central is a rough neighborhood. Here’s a map, for greater clarification. It’s the part of LA that’s rapped about by real “g’s” like Dr. Dre and Tupac. It’s the ugly side of a city not especially known for its beauty in any case or circumstance—a district harder hit by the economic times than most. With these leaner times crime is up, and every so often USC’s administrators send out e-mails informing the student body of another kid held up at gun point, or stabbed, or whatever.

As I settled into my new home out here, the pattern of emails about muggings and such felt awfully familiar. Los Angeles is the second largest city in the nation, so crime there is to be expected, but why does Durham have the crime it does? What happened to the shining southern city it used to be? It was a city of prosperity and a trailblazer in the cultural and economic advancement of African Americans. Why the downturn? Were economic reasons to blame?

I’m sure it was a variety of factors, but the result is clear: a once vibrant community that only in the last decade or so is starting to heal and regain its former stature. Culture in Durham will probably never have the impact that Los Angeles culture has in the greater United States, but I believe that Duke University must continue to play a large role in Durham’s recovery. See, we Dukies talk about the insular Duke bubble often as a barrier between campus and the town, but Duke has nothing on USC. USC is truly a separate world that makes very little real effort to interact with it’s community. The result is growing gap between students and residents.

Duke has a chance to be different, and I hope we continue to act on through projects like DukeEngage in Durham and others so that someday Durham doesn’t feel like South Central Los Angeles.

Follow the money

13 Apr 2009, Posted by Justina Wong in Backpages, Cartoon, 0 Comments

April 13, 2009

Two weeks left

12 Apr 2009, Posted by Vijai Atal in Backpages, Cartoon, 0 Comments

April 8, 2009

Improving Duke

09 Apr 2009, Posted by Jeff Ditzler in Backpages, Jeff Ditzler, 0 Comments

Before I begin my list of suggestions, I must acknowledge the progress Duke has made since I began coming here.  When I was a freshman, I had to ride all the way through Central on the C-2 bus if I wanted to go to West Campus on the weekends (20 miles in the snow, uphill both ways, etc.), the football team won about once every 20 games, and ARAMARK was feeding us cardboard in the Marketplace.  We didn’t even have Coach K in his boxers to entertain us.

Winston Churchill was once confronted by a woman who complained that the amount of alcohol he drank could fill her town’s hall halfway to the ceiling, and he acknowledged that he still had a lot of drinking to do to fill the whole thing.  Similarly, Duke must not allow its previous accomplishments to obscure the fact that there’s room for further improvement.

A year ago, I knew exactly what was wrong with the Duke bus system.  There were too many lazy bums getting on at the admissions office and the power plant (why on Earth would anyone get off at the power plant?!?).  Cut the number of bus stops in half and make the moochers walk fifty yards so the rest of us can get to class on time.

I should have figured that the same God who created Rosie O’Donnell and the duck-billed platypus would have a strange sense of humor, and He decided to teach me a lesson about complaining by moving my job to the Smith Warehouse and my dorm to Edens.  Now, my trips between West and East routinely involve the admissions office, the power plant, and, sometimes, both.  Having been on both sides of the issue, I’d split the C-1 route into an “express” route going directly from East to West and a regular route with all the stops intact.

Staying with transportation, it’s time to bite the bullet and increase the availability and convenience of student parking.  I’m not necessarily saying build a four-story parking garage in the Blue Zone—the risk of someone falling off of it during Tailgate may be too great—but parking has been a pain in students’ necks for long enough.  (Which reminds me of another great stride Duke has made recently.  It used to be that students had to evacuate the Blue Zone every Friday before home football games so every Florida State, Clemson, or Virginia Tech fan within 75 miles could park there and root against our team.  We still have to park elsewhere during football games, of course, but during the Age of Cutcliffe, some of our replacements are at least fellow Duke fans.)

During my freshman year, an epidemic struck my dorm.  Southgate doesn’t have air conditioning, and for some reason I can’t quite understand, we weren’t allowed to bring our own air conditioners—except for one guy whose allergies required him to have air conditioning.  A plague swept through the dorm, and soon just about everyone had a doctor’s note asking for air conditioning.  I’m no epidemiologist, but perhaps installing air conditioning in the remaining dorms will prevent any allergy outbreaks in the future.

Finally, just in case Larry Moneta is reading this, we can always use more plazas.

Jeff Ditzler is a Trinity senior who realizes that implementing most of these will have to wait until after the recession.