Grand Theft Auto IV: 5 out of 5

What does the Amer­i­can dream mean to you? For Niko Bel­lic, the anti-hero of Rock­star North’s new game Grand Theft Auto IV, the Amer­i­can Dream is rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a new begin­ning, where he can escape the hor­rors he expe­ri­enced in Ser­bia.

This theme of change and new begin­nings is repeated through­out the game, and this is obvi­ous from the first trailer when Niko says hope­fully, “per­haps here, things will be dif­fer­ent.”

One can assume that things will def­i­nitely not be dif­fer­ent, and Niko will still be exposed to the hor­rors of his past.

The game begins with Niko com­ing into Lib­erty City via a large boat called “the platy­pus,” a ref­er­ence to the clas­sic immi­gra­tion medium from the turn of the cen­tury.

Springville Art Show

The Utah All-State High School Art Show is the best exhi­bi­tion of its kind in the Moun­tain West. The Springville Museum of Art and their spon­sors want to col­lect orig­i­nal visual art from Utah teenagers by giv­ing them a pro­fes­sional con­ven­tion for stu­dent artists. For many of the stu­dents enter­ing the Springville exhi­bi­tion, this will be their first real taste of com­pe­ti­tion.

Each high school may sub­mit a min­i­mum of four pieces per school. NS has sub­mit­ted seven. These include two pieces from Sarah Allan, two from Amanda Johansen, two from Andrew Fryer, and one from Lon­nie McCul­loch.

Allan sub­mit­ted a stamp as well as an oil self-portrait.

“I really enjoyed it, and they weren’t those projects you look back on and wish you could’ve done some­thing…”

Girls dislike male dance excuses

In our pre­vi­ous issue, one of my col­leagues wrote about why guys don’t ask girls to date dances. He used a lot of excuses to get his point across, but the fact of the mat­ter is that girls can use the exact same excuses, and yet, girls still ask guys to date dances.

Like many guys, girls try to focus on their school­work, but some­how girls are still able to ask a boy to a date dance and plan an activ­ity for that date at the same time.

‘Chronicle’ provides suspense, lessons about power, abuse

Day to day we encounter hun­dreds of peo­ple, whether it’s in the halls of your school, at work, or going through repeated actions that are a nor­mal part of our sched­ule.  As we go through these actions, that seem as no big deal to us, they can make an impact on someone’s life.  Whether it’s good or bad.

In Andrew Detmer’s case, every­one that pushed him around or bul­lied him, should have thought twice.  In the new movie “Chron­i­cle,” which released last week­end, Andrew has tele­ki­netic pow­ers that allow him to move objects, do dan­ger­ous stunts, and fly.

Pep band brings school spirit, pride to basketball games with melodies

The crowd cheers as the bas­ket­ball falls through the hoop with a swish. The buzzer rings and the cheer­ing com­pounds, every­one yells and the play­ers cel­e­brate. Above it all rises the sound of the pep-band. The bas­ket­ball games are obvi­ously the main events but it is also obvi­ous that the pep-band adds some­thing to the games that makes them much more excit­ing.

“Some­times no one is really cheer­ing, but the pep band makes up for it.”

Said Paige Francks one of the North San­pete girls bas­ket­ball play­ers.

Alex Soren­son agreed when she said.

Poor acting, awkward scenes doom “Breaking Dawn”

Movie Review:

Awk­ward, strange, and depress­ing, describe what I felt when I recently went to the new film of the Twi­light saga Break­ing Dawn. Using humor was what made sit­ting through the movie more enjoy­able.

I didn’t go to the movie when it first came out, but waited a cou­ple weeks before I watched it.  Dur­ing that time, I heard some good reports from rav­ing Twi­light fans, and some bad, from those who told me that it was gross and inap­pro­pri­ate.  The birthing scene was described to me as a bloody, revolt­ing part of the movie.

The Son Of Neptune

Book Review:

“Percy Jack­son and the Olympians” a five book series writ­ten by Rick Rior­dan has been an extremely pop­u­lar fic­tional series. Rick Rior­dan recently began a new series “Heroes of Olym­pus” the sec­ond book in the series “The Son of Nep­tune was recently released. In this series “Heroes of Olym­pus” we fol­low not only the Greek camp Half Blood but also the roman ver­sion Camp Jupiter.

The Son of Nep­tune begins with Percy flee­ing from some harpies, which are intent on his death. He flees to Camp Jupiter, the roman coun­ter­part of camp half blood. When he arrives at camp Jupiter he meets Frank and Hazel. The roman camp seems hos­tile and dan­ger­ous. There are strict rules with strict pun­ish­ments. To Percy every­thing seems alien and vis­cous

Surrogates provides predictable thrills

The first thing you hear in this movie is a voice preach­ing, telling you to take a look at your­self. What you see in the mir­ror every morn­ing is you, the way God made you, the way you should be. And liv­ing your life through a machine is liv­ing a lie. Then the title appears. Then a mon­tage begins start­ing four­teen years before this story takes place. It shows the grad­ual pro­gres­sion of con­trol­ling a machine with your thoughts. Then the movie jumps to the present time.

At this point the major­ity of the world’s…

Twilight enthusiasts prepare for epic movie release next week

On August 2, 2008, thou­sands of eager girls (and a few men) lined up hours before mid­night wait­ing for one thing: Break­ing Dawn.

Since the first book in this series (Twi­light) came out in 2003, Twi­light obses­sion has been spread­ing like wild­fire. Stephe­nie Meyer came into her career as an unknown, but every­one knows her work now.

How­ever, those who have not read the books or did not enjoy them find them­selves ask­ing one thing: why is it such a big hit?

There have been count­less vam­pire love sto­ries, both before Twi­light and since it came out, yet none of…

This year’s musical has “All the thinks you can think”

Oh, the thinks you can think. This is the mes­sage of this month’s musi­cal, which is titled “Seussi­cal the Musi­cal.” It is story about being faith­ful, loyal and using your imag­i­na­tion.

“It’s going to be dif­fer­ent from the other musi­cals, but its going to be great,” said Chante Birch, who plays the role of a girl bird named Mazyie in the play.

The musi­cal fol­lows the story of Hor­ton the Ele­phant, who pro­tects a dust speck that con­tains the micro­scopic “Whos,” even though every­one calls him crazy, and JoJo, who…