To apply or not to apply: Unfortunately for many students considering applying to live on the Lawn, that is not the only question. Where will you live if you’re rejected? If you’re accepted, what will you do with the lease you already signed? Should you sign a lease anyway, or wait to hear from the committee? Every year these questions haunt hundreds of students for whom the Lawn represents yet another plunge into application purgatory. Moving the Lawn selection process earlier to coincide with other on-Grounds housing applications could help alleviate many of these problems.

Since the Lawn is officially on-Grounds housing, it seems reasonable to expect the application to coincide with the other on-Grounds housing options. And while the Lawn application becomes available online beginning November 16th — only one day after applications for Residential Colleges are due — the selection process doesn’t even begin until mid-January. The Lawn Selection Committee announces its offers February 8th, leaving the luckless rejects to scrounge for whatever off-Grounds housing options remain.

The situation is equally inconvenient for students who receive an offer to live on the Lawn but who have already signed a lease for the following year. The chosen ones still have to find homeless students to assume their discarded leases. Otherwise, Lawn residents would be obligated to pay the remainder of the lease — up to 12 months of rent. No one wants to maintain two residences that are within a mile from one another.

One way to avoid alienating potential roommates is to put all your eggs in the Academical Village basket, so to speak, and apply for the Lawn without signing another lease. A bold move, no doubt. But it is hardly a wise way to approach fourth-year housing unless, of course, you are sure of your own success. But considering only 54 out of roughly 250 applicants receive offers, such sureness seems a bit hubristic.

Some claim the additional time allows the selection committee to see how applicants spend the remainder of fall semester. But many organizations hold their internal elections before Lawn applications are due, so moving the application forward wouldn’t matter in that sense. Anyway, a few month means very little in terms of an applicant’s participation at the University. It means more to students looking for leases — when every month counts.

If you believe past statements from selection committee members, they claim to look for consistent contributions to the University community. If that is indeed the case, surely a month or two doesn’t make much difference.

The easiest way to shorten the application process would be to move the deadline back to November, rather than in January. It may not be the simplest application, but students shouldn’t need almost three months to complete a few short answer questions. By moving up the deadline, the selection committee could complete their deliberation either by Thanksgiving break or winter break at the latest. Either way would give students several more months to sort out housing.

The angst of waiting to hear from the selection committee is punishment enough; students ought not have to endure the added hassle of searching for housing. On the bright side, at least that last-minute apartment has a bathroom.

THIS IS the story of Shin Dong Hyok. I heard his story over the summer, when I was living in London. Mr. Hyok was staying at the same place I was, travelling with a Christian human rights group. At some point during his stay, someone — I’m not sure whether from his group or from the residence — decided it would be a good idea for him to share his story. So, on a Tuesday night about 50 of the residents gathered in the tea room and, through an interpreter, Hyok told us his story.

Hyok was born in a North Korean prison camp. He began working when he was around four. When he was seven he watched a girl beaten to death in front of him. At ten he was told his mother and brother tried to escape the camp, and he was tortured with hot coals for information about their plans. After he recovered he and his father watched his mother and brother publicly executed. When he finally did manage to escape, it was only because the dead body of a friend who had been trying to escape with him was laid out across the bottom set of electric wires, forming a hole in the fence. Still his leg was severely burned from his crawl out.

What struck me most about Hyok was how young he looked. He’s only 24, but he seems closer to 19. He talks softly, hunched over, always staring at the floor. In front of us, he kept one arm crossed over the other, and it was easy to see that his middle finger was shorter than all the others — it had been chopped off in punishment when he dropped a sewing machine.

The group with which Hyok was travelling was at the time lobbying to increase awareness of the situation in North Korea among the international community and to propose various forms of action that countries could take in order to help the situation in North Korea.

The first portion of this scheme is the most important one. If you LexisNexis, or even just Google search North Korea, most of the stories you are going to find expound on fears of North Korea’s developing nuclear weapons program. Although the several prominent news sources in the United States and Britain (including CNN and the BBC) have reported on the existence of the camps, North Korea still officially denies it, and while many other atrocities — most notably Darfur — are now appearing in the news almost every day, others — like those in North Korea — are notably absent from the press. If a majority of people are in the dark about the situation, there’s a very slim chance that enough political pressure would ever be put on countries to motivate them to action against the human rights violations.

When it comes to the United States directly dealing with North Korea, this is a bit of a moot point. Short of an all out invasion, there is little America could do to pressure North Korea to change its policies on human rights. After all, the United States has had an economic embargo going since 1953. After playing that card, there’s not much else left in the deck.

However, this does not mean that the United States is powerless to do anything about the situation. One of the main points that human rights activists are lobbying for when it comes to North Korea involves China. Currently, China forcibly repatriates North Koreans who have escaped across their border. The logic behind this has to do with pure immigration law. Generally those that cross China’s border are doing so to escape famine, and not out of political necessity or fear for their lives. They are therefore immigrants, not refugees, and should be repatriated. However, once they are returned they face a strong threat of interrogation and torture.

While America has almost no leverage at all to encourage North Korea to change any of their practices, this is not the case with China. It would not be difficult to at least begin talks with China about not extraditing North Koreans, and it would be a huge step in the direction of human rights.

As I watched Hyok stare down at the floor, and explain slowly that he was very lucky to have escaped and very happy to be standing up there, in front of all of us, I wondered what it would be like to escape from a prison camp after living there your whole life. Would you see the world as a paradise? Or would you be incredibly frustrated at having escaped, and now having to spend an entire life campaigning to try to free others you knew were still suffering.

Margaret Sessa-Hawkins is a Cavalier Daily Viewpoint Writer. She is a fourth-year student majoring in Spanish and English.

LAST YEAR was my first year back in academia after a two-year hiatus and I had quite forgotten the importance of rankings to the collective institutional ego. I was more than a little amused by how frequently this newspaper would give above-the-fold billing to seemingly obscure rankings. My classmates can attest to the many times I would come into class clutching the day’s paper and chortling about the fact that, apparently, the most important news of the day was the University basketball team’s relative graduation rate or something equally trivial.

The truth is that if you compare us to other schools we’re good, we’re bad, we’re beautiful, and we’re ugly, depending on how you look at it. But the attention garnered by specialized rankings in which the University does well puts our obsession with navel-gazing into an amusing light. Universities in general — and the University in particular — would be better off if they recognized that institutional status-seeking is a tedious goal.

Here are some of the rankings articles that made it onto the front page first semester last year (in chronological order). Starting the year off, the University ranked 35th on Black Enterprise’s list of top 50 colleges for African-Americans. On September 14th we discovered the Law School had the third highest number of clerks at the Supreme Court. On September 21st we found out that Kiplinger ranked the University third best value among American public colleges.

At the risk of boring the reader, let’s go through October’s editions. On October 4 we learned from the front page that we were the 11th “fittest” school as ranked by Men’s Fitness magazine (not as exciting though, admittedly, as the University’s 2005 mention as “hottest for fitness” by Kaplan/Newsweek). The October 26 edition of The Cavalier Daily informed us that 51 of the nation’s top five thousand doctors (as ranked by “America’s Top Doctors”) were affiliated with the University.

All that in one half of one semester. We must be pretty hot stuff here at the University. Certainly that was the feeling of The Cavalier Daily’s managing board last year when, in a lead editorial, they compared the troika of Harvard, Yale, and the University (“the Big Three of elite American universities”) to the Allied leaders at the Tehran Conference.

Always the contrarian, I fired up my Web browser and did a little devil’s advocate-style research to discover if we held up so well in rankings that weren’t publicized in this paper. First, I delved into the Princeton Review’s rankings of the best 366 colleges, which ranks colleges on academic, extracurricular, social, and other metrics derived from surveys taken by approximately 100,000 students each year. Only the top 20 schools in each category were reported, and the University places in the top 20 in only three of them — job placement services, college library and jock school (its ranks were fifteenth, sixteenth and fifteenth, respectively).

The University of Maryland places in the top 20 on more lists than we do — diverse student population, best college newspaper, students pack the stadium and party schools. Then again, Berkeley didn’t make it onto any of the lists, so I guess there’s not too much to worry about on this front.

I also discovered in my research that, according to a ranking created by the makers of Trojan condoms, we have less safe sex than many colleges including Harvard, Princeton and Yale (confound them). One last example: the University placed a predictably mediocre 714th in parking quality according to the (methodologically shady) survey on CollegeDirt.com.

I certainly hope no one takes any of this as an indictment of the University. But if there is no point in portraying the University to be worse than it is by cherry-picking rankings, there is as little point in trying to make it look better than it is. Rather, we could pursue independently determined values — the pursuit of truth, understanding and — dare I say — wisdom, beyond the jockeying for prestige with institutions around the country.

Sadly, such sentiments were probably only possible, if ever, for universities accorded preeminence and insulated from market pressures to the extent that, say, Harvard or Yale was when they served as finishing schools for the New England aristocracy a century ago. So watch out Berkeley, we’re gunning for you.

Andrew Winerman is a Cavalier Daily Viewpoint Writer. He is a second-year graduate student in the Department of Economics.

RAMBLING over our beloved Grounds this fall, one thing, besides blistering heat, is inescapable: construction. Wherever one chooses to stroll — down Rugby Road, along the East Range, through New Dorms and almost anywhere south of New Cabell Hall, the sound of heavy machinery and the skeletal specter of cranes invade the ear and eye. Perhaps some of this construction is necessary, such as the refurbishment of historical buildings such as Cocke and Rouss Halls, but one must question whether or not all of the new construction is absolutely necessary, and as a follow up to that, whether or not the funds involved might be better used elsewhere.

Least intrusive to anyone who does not visit Randall or Levering Halls is what will eventually be the new School of Commerce attached to the back of Rouss Hall. The Commerce School’s Web site declares that one of the project’s goals is to provide the Commerce School with “an inspiring physical presence on the Lawn, worthy of those who worked so hard to make the School great” and in doing so, to provide a space that can help keep the Commerce School among the nation’s finest by attracting the top students and faculty.

One wonders, however, whether or not the new building is really necessary at all. The McIntire School climbed to the number two spot amongst undergraduate business schools, according to BusinessWeek, in its old home in Monroe Hall, which, while a venerable building, remains significantly more comfortable than most facilities occupied by lowly College of Arts and Sciences students. If one wanted to improve the Commerce School with $60 million, perhaps they might be better used towards offering higher salaries to the professors the school believes the new building will lure to Charlottesville. According to Jim Travisano, director of communications for the McIntire School, it is necessary due to inadequate space that faculty members have had to share offices. He compared faculty recruiting amongst business schools to an “arms race” and said “if you don’t have a world class facility it’s hard to do world class recruiting.” In any event, it is too late to rail against a new Commerce School, as it ought to be completed in the spring of 2008.

At least I as a student will be able to see the new Commerce School and find solace in the fact that those of us in the College inherited Monroe Hall and, according to Travisano, will have expanded opportunities in conjunction with the Comm School. Other areas of construction on Grounds provide unsightly messes and are bigger wastes of money.

For me the most perplexing piece of construction is the wasteland in New Dorms between Tuttle and O-Hill. A column earlier this week argued that this short term eyesore and assault on the ears of first-years will lead to “long-term benefits.” But according to that column, long-term here means ten years long, as since my first year that field has gone from a patch of dirt to a grassy field to a patch of dirt surrounded by green walls — and all so the first year class can increase by 10 percent, which will inevitably increase construction in the future. One can only wonder where the cycle will end.

The biggest waste of money, however, remains the South Lawn Project. I question whether or not the University needs to spend $105 million on new facilities. Perhaps there are flaws with the current facilities (again, according to the Campaign for the College Web site, a lack of space for faculty), but the entire grandiose project seems overblown and excessive. It seems like the University is taking the basic requirements for functioning, then finding the most expensive way to meet them.

Couldn’t that $105 million be used for other purposes? Much has been said in recent weeks in this publication about financial aid: $105 million could go a long way towards reducing tuition and thus the need for financial aid. Another use could be scholarships for studying abroad, as one of the goals of the College Campaign and South Lawn Project is to make the average student a better global citizen. What better way than helping them pay the excessive study abroad expenses?

As you can probably tell, I don’t like construction. I would rather get by with what we have than sink a lot of money into glitzy new buildings. Much as we might want a shiny new “state-of-the-art” facility for every program, we ought to look at what we need instead of what we want, and realize that a new building is not the answer to everything.

Robby Colby’s column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at rcolby@cavalierdaily.com.

Last week, tableau participated in an exclusive conference call with Julie Taymor, Tony award-winning director of the new movie Across the Universe.

With a soundtrack composed wholly of Beatles’ songs, Across the Universe reflects the politics, radicalism and free love of the 1960s. Perhaps most famous for directing The Lion King on Broadway, Taymor set out to tell the story of star-crossed lovers Jude and Lucy and the era that both defined them and tore them apart.

College journalists around the country posed questions to Taymor about everything from the cinematic techniques of the film to her experience growing up in the 60s.

Shelly: How will today’s youth be affected by this film?

Entertainment can be not only fun and entertaining; it can cause discussion. I think the first thing is for people to start discussing what they’ve seen and what the differences [are] between the times in the 60s [and now]. And the war and how change was made; change was started by the youth movement. It’s not just about the Iraq war; we have many issues that really need to be discussed openly and actively. So I think you begin with that.

Katie Sharon: What makes Across the Universe unique from other films that are out today?

First of all, it’s a musical. Well, I would say it’s more of a rock opera than a musical because its story is all told through the lyrics. It’s only got a half-hour of dialogue and I don’t know if you know this, but 80-90 percent of it is sung live; it’s not lip-synched. That’s different than the other musicals. We really tried to have the actors do the songs and the dialogue on location so that it would feel very real and there would be no disconnect between the dialogue and the singing…Hopefully it is a very fun, engaging, and entertaining movie, but also it’s got some content that is very current today, even though the movie is set in the 60s. Without being didactic, it’s got some strong social and political statements to make within this entertainment context, as opposed to the way a lot of our movies are either raw, pure entertainment without content, without much to talk about, nothing to really say (which I love too, by the way- I’m absolutely for fun, just raw comedy) or we have very serious movies where you’ve got to know when you’re going in [saying to yourself], “ok, I’ve gotta think here.” And hopefully Across the Universe does both. It’s romantic, it’s, I hope, very entertaining, but also the way that it’s told is unlike any other movie. We use techniques, we use a style; it is surrealism and realism and fantasy and craziness in a way that I don’t think a lot of movies [are].

Clint: You narrowed from 200 down to 33 songs. Were there any particular songs that you really wanted to put in there that might not have fit into the story?

There were a number of those songs. There were some great ones that we considered early in the screenwriting phase like “Yesterday”. We had the comedy of “Sergeant Pepper” right after the Columbia riots, but comedy at that moment was not appropriate… The songs are in the movie to tell a story, so the songs that I really adore outside of it- there are plenty of them- at this time we didn’t need for the screenplay.

Reinier Hernandez, Florida International University: What determined which song went with which scene? Were the individual songs chosen to fit the story or did you write the story around the songs?

You kind of have it both ways. It started with the premise that we could set this musical using the Beatles catalogue in the 60s and this simple- actually NOT simple- love story. Then, for the expansion of the story, we listened to these songs, and when songs were found some of the characters in the story were created around those songs. Jude wasn’t created for “Revolution”, but because the story of their love affair falling apart centered around the differences between Lucy being an activist and Jude being much more about being an artist and not being someone who fights for a cause necessarily, “Revolution” seemed like a perfect song to express that sentiment. So the scene in the SDR office (Students for Democratic Republic), which was SDS (Students for Democratic Society) originally, that scene came because I knew the song existed. I loved “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, and when we thought about the placement of that song after “Revolution” and the whole notion of that incredible time of violence, the Martin Luther King assassination seemed a perfect jumping off point for a song that was both intimate, about the personal disaster that was going on between Sadie and JoJo and Jude and Lucy, but also the larger context of what was happening in the country at that time. It was a round-robin; songs suggested characters ([such as] “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and how Prudence was born when I heard that song sung by a woman without the lyrics “I want to be your man” changing). Once [the characters] were developed, you could find songs like “Dear Prudence” that would keep their story going. So it was a really fun thing to figure out, because you’re coming to a place where an action happens like “I Want You” and you think, “I would love an induction center- what’s the perfect song?” It just jumped up. You know, it was a light bulb.

Alison Kaiser, University of Arizona: What are your views on the lack of high-profile female directors in Hollywood? Do you feel that its harder women to break into the industry because it’s so heavily male dominated?

I would love to say no to you, but I think it’s still very tough for women. I think they have to hold on tight and really have a very strong, powerful reason to be doing it- a story they need to tell. What happens with women if they don’t have a big success, is that it’s much harder for them to get their second or third film made. It is definitely still male-dominated, but there are a lot of young women who are moving in, so I think it will change. But I can’t say it’s just easy street.

Jesse Morrison: How did you success concerning the collaboration with Disney on the Lion King prepare you for the negotiation process with Revolution concerning the highly-publicized edit?

(laughter) Too personal! Look, all I can say is that I’m not the only director who went through this kind of struggle in the final part of post-production. I am a director who does theatre, opera, and film, and therefore for me what is absolutely important is to hang tight and stay true to what I believe in and what I think the vision of the film is; and I really believe that it has commercial potential, and without compromise. I do compromise if I believe in the compromise- there’s no problem with that. It’s not that you have to be hard-nosed about it. I still think I knew the film was working in the way that it had been cut, and I was very pleased that finally Sony and Revolution backed that cut. So all I can say is that I come from other disciplines and I’ve been allowed to fulfill my visions in those disciplines and I wanted to be able to do that with this movie because I’m very passionate about it.

Daniel Schwartz, University of Pennsylvania: I was curious to know what your take is on the differences between TV and live-action theatre and recording on film?

Well, I love bouncing back and forth from one medium to another because each of the mediums gives me different tools to work with. [In Across the Universe] you can see the use of animation, computer-generated imagery, stock footage mixed with live-action realistic filmmaking. It’s a combination of naturalism and all those elements because cinema gives me that power that tool to do that. And I think that because we’ve got those tools you can REALLY be expressionistic and theatrical- not theatre-like, when I say theatrical I don’t mean its like theatre. You know, something like “Strawberry Fields” I could never do in theatre. A lot of the imagery that I do in Across the Universe, I cannot do in theatre. When I do theatre, I do what theatre does best; in something like The Lion King, [which] is highly stylized, you actually see the mechanics. You see the strings, you see the rods, and you see that they’re puppets and masks. In Across the Universe, there’s very little puppetry, but what you see is actually based on reality on the Bread and Puppet theatre of the period, the marches on Washington. Those aren’t my puppets. Those are actually recreations of the real Bread and Puppet theatre from the 60s and 70s. [Across the Universe] is shot on seventy locations or more and its shot as a real movie-movie- as is Titus. Titus is very different than “Titus Andronicus” the way that I did it in the theatre. So I try and adapt to what each medium does that the other one doesn’t.

Lizzie West: How do you think that the Beatles generation will think of the movie?

So far, so good. I’ve seen it with people that are of the age of the 60′s- my brother and sister’s age. I think this movie should appeal to everybody from ten years old up until 95, because if you lived in that time then it’s reminiscent… I think very few people will feel that you can’t touch the original [songs], because for forty years there have been amazing covers of the Beatles songs. Good ones and bad ones. You know, really, David Bowie, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Fiona Apple- there’ve been unbelievable different versions of these phenomenal songs, which can transcend the performers, meaning that good renditions are good renditions because the songs are great. And the people who lived in that time, I think they’ll love going and find it deeply moving and connect to it on a spiritual level and political level. And the fact that it’s playing to college-aged and younger is what really makes all of us who worked on it extremely happy because it’s about young people, and times don’t change that much, unfortunately. And so if the story worked and the music worked for college students and younger, I think that’s what we’re really most delighted about, but I don’t think it’s going to work any less for older people. I think they will hopefully consider it well-done, well-performed, well-sung, and a story worth telling again.

Ilola: what did you do to make a movie set in the 60s relevant to a modern audience?

I don’t think The Beatles songs date. I think they’re too good to date. I think that the lyrics and the music are just so fresh always, you can do bad versions of them, but you can’t destroy the songs. “If I Fell in Love with You” is going to speak to any young girl who’s falling in love and has some doubts about it because she’s just been hurt or these songs like “I am a Walrus” and “Strawberry Fields” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, the kind-of psychedelic songs, are still whacked out and absurdist and poetic and weird and fun and as mystifying as they ever were. So what makes them appealing is that hopefully the story is a good story and that the performers- we’ve got Bono, Eddie Izzard, Salma Hayek, and Joe Cocker, as well as Evan Rachel Wood, who a lot of people know, but we’ve introduced five new phenomenal young actors star singers. And Jim Sturgess is seeming to blow everybody away. He’s just a brilliant actor; he’s coming out in three more big movies after this. He’s the lead in 21 and he’s in The Other Boleyn Girl, and this kid, this guy, can really sing and act. He’s as good as they get. It’s really the story told through the songs, and if you feel them, if you’re entertained by them, and they provoke thought, then it will speak to this young audience, or any audience, and get them into the movie. I don’t think anything is dated about this movie, especially the war, which is very unfortunate.

Anne, San Diego: Why is my generation so fascinated by the 60s?

The thing is that right now kids have tremendous independence and they don’t have to find their parents for much. In the 60s, they were coming out of this really conservative time and everything was a rebellion. Everything was a rebellion- from your hair to your values to whether your wanted to think about your future or not, you just wanted to “be” as they say. I think that what’s appealing is to see a generation of revolutionaries, of people who are now very conservative. I mean honestly, it’s your parents. Or your parents’ parents. And what happened to those people? I don’t know. At that time in the 60s it was very cool to be smart. It was very cool to be arrogant, to be rebellious, to be out there doing what you wanted to do, to come up against the authority. It’s not just that it was cool; it was what you had to do to be an individual. There were all these movements of free love; that was the first time women were getting birth control, there was a women’s movement, black power movement, you know the racial situation was being shaken up in the early 60′s, obviously the anti-war movement. But with all these movements going, it was a time of unbelievable change, and the change was coming from youth. Now, youth always have that power, they always have it, but they have to go up and grab it and they have to go up against the authority. We have a very insidious authority right now, with complete control over the media. We have an Internet that keeps people connected, but on the other hand, it keeps people separated. Together but separated. And when you had to go out and really get together in the streets or in these very volatile situations, it caused fires. It caused a lot of sparks and a lot of danger. I think young people are always going to be attracted to what that is like, and you know if [the film] sets off a wave of excitement, we’d all be really, really happy about that.

Jacob, Tufts University: How do you feel about this generation’s reaction to this war?

Well, I think it’s pretty quiet. Because its fairly obvious that the draft in the 60s was one of the reasons that got people out protesting, because everybody could be drafted. And right now, it’s our poor and unemployed…who are going to fight this war in Iraq or who are going to enlist in the army or marines or whatever. If they had to put a draft in, I think the Bush administration, and everybody, knows that there would be an uproar. There would be an uproar! It’s not just Americans; most people have to have something happen to them personally before they become active. You know, they have to feel it, either from their fathers or brothers or sons or sisters now. I think that would be a tremendous difference. I don’t think fundamentally people ever are different, but they do respond to what happens to them on a personal level, and that is the big difference between then and now. I also think our media has become… totalitarian. I’m not trying to be an alarmist or conspiracy theorist, but…there’s less of that independent talk that there was in the 60s. And we do not have songwriters and artists doing as much protest song and material as we used to.

Brittany Moseley, Kent State University: What was your story to tell for this movie? Why was this so important to tell?

I really believe in this story. The characters of Lucy and Max are loosely based on my older brother and sister. My sister was a radical; she was in SDS. My brother was a dropout from Johns Hopkins, a double-triple-type dropout, a musician and a cab driver. I lived as the younger sister by five or six years. I watched my parents go through this insanity of the 60s with the drugs and the war, and it made a huge impression on me. Most of my projects are not personally about me at all; I’ve done ones in Africa, Asia, and Mexico…It’s not about my history; it’s about ideas, values, stories that I want to tell. As a director you spend two are three years of your life so immersed that you better love it. And you have to believe in it, because all along the way it gets chipped at. You have to put blinders on in a way. Especially if it’s not obvious or normally commercial or what everybody thinks they know. I’m not into that. I’m into giving people- and hopefully educating them in- something they didn’t even know they wanted. They’re through my minds-eye, my own vision that hopefully will speak to a lot of people. I’m not talking about being narcissistic and just doing things for your own self; I love to communicate to a lot of people, but I also want them to see a very clear vision and you have to feel strongly about something in order to hang onto that vision.

Taylor: Were there any specific occurrences in the 60s that you witnessed that inspired any of those images?

Oh sure! I saw the marches with the Bread and Puppet Theater with the giant LBJ and the skeletons and the death characters. I was a part of that in the 70s…with the crying Vietnamese ladies- the giant, giant Vietnamese ladies. You know, the idea that you could do these huge protests against the war with these giant theatrical images that moved people was very inspiring to me. I obviously saw The Beatles on television, on the Ed Sullivan show with all those screaming girls. My older sister was one of them when she was younger, and then she became a very serious protester and radical. I watched my sister transform, like Lucy, from this innocent high school girl into someone who really became an impassioned political active person. And that made a big impression on me as a young girl watching my older sister. All of these things were something that I experienced all the people around me going through. The Vietnam War was on television; [I watched] the protests, Kent State, and the violence that came out at the end of the 60s when the protest movements were failing. So, I wasn’t necessarily directly involved, but I was living at the time and was deeply affected by what I saw.

Alison Kaiser, Arizona: The movie looks visually really, really cool. How important was it to you as a director to get it looking visually perfect?

It’s very important that the visuals match the brilliance of the music, and when you’re doing a musical you have to free them to really go out. Because usually musicals have what we call “production numbers” on the page where…you can either have a solo where it’s really simple or you do have these giant numbers, like in The Lion King, where you see this unbelievable imagery going on that is stemming from the music and the songs. I really felt like The Beatles work, you know, whether its “Yellow Submarine”, “Magical Mystery Tour”, “Help”, they were some of the first music videos ever done, The Beatles. That we should try and jump off of where they began and then go even further if we could. [In "She's So Heavy"], with just an image and one word, I feel like we’re saying something about what it is to carry liberty, whether it’s into Iraq or a third-world nation. It’s a heavy thing to do- to carry that statue, carry that symbol of liberty.

Cavalier Daily: Have you gotten any feedback from Ringo or Paul yet? Were they in the back of your mind while you were making this film?

Yes! All of them have seen it. Ringo was the first to see it early cut, and I wasn’t there, but I heard he really liked it. And particularly he liked “Mr. Kite” with Eddie Izzard. I sat next to Paul McCartney in London in a private screening at Sony and it was the most nerve-wracking, unbelievably difficult screening. I finished the movie and I was very excited because at the end of it, I asked him if there was anything he didn’t like and he said, “What’s not to like?” He loved “Let it Be” and “Mr. Kite”, and he was very knocked out by the performers. That was a thrill. And Yoko, she really liked it. Olivia Harrison wrote me a beautiful letter saying it did not idealize or romanticize the 60′s and how she felt it really helped the legacy of the Beatles music. So that was a wonderful thing to hear. On that front, we’ve been very pleased with the response. And of course it was a big burden to take this music on, and I was constantly thinking were we doing justice to the brilliance of The Beatles music, but it was a fantastic response.

The much anticipated fall television season has started off with lots of excitement, and it looks like the premieres of several new series and old favorites yet to come will not disappoint. Here’s a recap of where a few shows left off with their finales last season.

Heroes season one ended with the death of two major villains, Sylar and Linderman. Season two, titled “Generations,” premiered on NBC Sept. 24.

The fifth season of ABC’s Dancing With the Stars looks like the show will only get better with age. Season five has stars such as Melanie Brown (Scary Spice), Jane Seymour (Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman) and Jennie Garth (Beverly Hills, 90210).

Bones left its second season with Angela and Jack ditching their wedding after the State Department shows up with information about Angela’s past. The series began its third season on Fox Sept. 25.

The third season of House M.D. left the sarcastic yet hilarious Dr. House without any of his three assistants. Dr. Foreman quit; Dr. Chase was fired; and Dr. Cameron quit. Season 4 premiered on Fox Sept. 25.

Yesterday the Grey’s Anatomy spin-off Private Practice premiered. The show has Dr. Addison Montgomery leaving the Grey’s Anatomy team for a public clinic run by her divorced friends in L.A.

Also yesterday NBC premiered Bionic Woman, originally a 1970s series. Bionic Woman is about Jaime Sommers, a car-crash victim who has several of her limbs replaced with bionic ones.

Tonight, season four of Grey’s Anatomy premieres on ABC. Last season ended with heartbreak all around, as couples called it quits and Burke broke up with Cristina at the altar.

Ugly Betty returns tonight on ABC, and hopefully we’ll resolve many unanswered questions from season one. Season one left off with the death of Santos on the night of his son’s performance in West Side Story, the car wreck that left Alexis and Daniel both unconscious and the engagement of Wilhemina and Bradford.

Another beloved series, The Office, also returns tonight for its fourth season on NBC. Jim and Pam finally got together during last season’s finale, while Ryan won the widely coveted promotion.

Tomorrow the crime-fighting duo of an FBI agent and his mathematician brother return for their fourth season on Numb3rs on CBS. Season three ended with the discovery that team member Colby Granger has been selling secrets to the Chinese as well as the revealing of the Janus List.

Sept. 30 will bring back everyone’s favorite housewives to ABC for their fourth season. Desperate Housewives left off last season with the marriage of Mike and Susan, the possible death of Edie and Lynette’s chemotherapy.

Pushing Daisies premieres Oct. 3 on ABC. It tells the story of a pie-maker named Ned with a unique gift — if he touches dead people, they come back to life, but if he touches them again, they go back to being dead — this time for good. Ned has been using this gift to collect reward money from the families of murder victims, but what should he do when his love Chuck dies? Pushing Daisies also has a special bonus for all you Broadway lovers, in the form of Kristin Chenoweth, the original Glinda from Wicked.

Scrubs season six ended with Elliot about to be married to Keith, and a possible rekindling of the Elliot-JD relationship from previous seasons. Unfortunately, fans will have to wait awhile to see what happens, because season seven of Scrubs doesn’t premiere until Oct. 25.

Viewers have a lot of expectations about the fall television season, and networks are clearly pulling out all the stops to deliver.

Two years ago, the hearts of millions of American girls turned their attention to the British music scene. What captivated them was British pop singer James Blunt’s2005 single, “You’re Beautiful.” It made him the first British artist to reach No. 1 status in the United States since Elton John.

With five Grammy nominations, two Brit Awards and two MTV awards under his belt, Blunt is again geared toward success with the release of his latest album, All the Lost Souls.

Produced by Tom Rothrockunder Atlantic and Custard Records, Lost Souls carries the same charm and charisma as Blunt’s 2005 album Back to Bedlam. This time around, he can only hope for the same reaction from critics, fans and Grammy judges.

Unlike most artists, Blunt plays his complete album on his Web site. Hesitant listeners and prospective purchasers have an opportunity to browse the album for a preview. A stumble across the page, however, will leave listeners falling in love with Blunt’s talent.

One listen to Lost Souls makes it hard to believe Blunt once served in Kosovo. The former military man shows he has wrapped up his days in the British Army and has traded in combat for crooning with this ballad-heavy album.

Blunt has created a strikingly personal collection of revealing lyrics. He proves that therapeutic songwriting coupled with powerful vocal chords is the best medicine for a bruised heart. The outcome? We get an emotionally moving album, and he gets a cathartic release.

“1973,” the album’s first single, spotlights a delicately composed piano introduction — an uncommon sound in a guitar-loving world. The piano gears “1973″ into ballad-mode, preparing us for a song about the cycle of love and its tendency to bring us back to where we started. Blunt croons, “We sang / Here we go again.” Already a No. 1 hit single in Venezuela, “1973″ hopes to climb the American charts.

Interestingly enough, Blunt never seems to learn his lesson in love. Song after song, he reflects on its troubles. “Carry You Home” has Blunt singing “I’m watching you breathing for the last time / A song for your heart, but when it is quiet / I know what it means and I’ll carry you home … Trouble is the only way is down.”

“One of the Brightest Stars” will help Blunt keep the hearts of his American female followers. If not that, it’ll at least teach male listeners what their girlfriends want to hear; it’s just one of those songs a guy would write for a girl to tell her how he feels. Blunt sings, “everybody loves you / cause you’ve taken a chance … we always knew that you were one of the brightest stars.”

The classic James Blunt sound is unmistakably strong throughout Lost Souls. “I Really Want You” showcases his flexible vocal range and versatile expression. His lyrics are therapeutic, his voice is passionate and his brunette hair is a charming bonus detail. Blunt’s only fault in Lost Souls is that our listening experience comes to an end too quickly after a short 10 tracks, which keep us on our toes and asking for more.

Without a doubt, the release of this album will help Blun-t win over the heart of more female — and male — fans. And for the old fans, this album feels like a continuation of Back to Bedlam and will keep them tuned in for albums to come.

If you’re searching for something new and original to do this Friday afternoon between 5:30 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., the University of Virginia Art Museum might be the place to look.

For those who have never ventured to this location (“U.Va. has an art museum?”), it can be found on Rugby Road, right across from Madison Bowl. The museum is open Tuesdays through Sundays, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m., and admission is free. This Friday, however, the museum is open an additional two hours for Final Fridays.

This special event, which occurs the final Friday of every month, is the perfect opportunity for museum aficionados and novices alike to see what the museum has to offer. One can peruse exhibits, watch an artistic video in the media gallery, meet an artist or member of the executive board or partake in refreshments.

Free art and free food sounds like a pretty good deal — so what’s the catch? There actually isn’t one. Although Final Fridays is only open to museum members, membership is free to University students. Museum officials encourage students to visit the Final Friday event, during which time they can sign up for an account simply by providing an e-mail address.

“Coming to Final Fridays really gives students the chance to see the museum and art they’ve never been exposed to before,” museum security Crystal Pecoe explained. “It’s the best time to see what the art community has to offer.”

So what exactly can you expect? Some of the highlights include the Arshile Gorky exhibit titled “Drawings, The Early Years,” and an entire room devoted to 10 years’ worth of the museum’s active accumulation of art, called “A Decade of Collecting.” Other exhibits include “Sculpture from the Collection,” “Photography from the Collection” and new media gallery programs featuring the films of Peter Whitehead.

The Gorky exhibit has been at the museum since Aug. 24 and will remain through Oct. 28. Museum-goers can enjoy 15 drawings and one painting from Gorky’s private collection. Previously displayed at the CDS Gallery in New York and Jack Rutberg Fine Arts gallery in Los Angeles, the items presented in Charlottesville focus primarily on works from the early part of Gorky’s career in the 1920s. Strong influences such as Picasso are evident in Gorky’s work; his drawings feature cubist and surrealist styles.

“A Decade of Collecting” displays just a sampling of more than 1,500 works the museum has acquired since 1997. The exhibition offers a varied, eclectic smattering of all the pieces the museum has to offer, but is concentrated in the artistic styles of painting and sculpture from Jefferson’s era, American art in a range of media, Old Master prints and drawings and contemporary art. Everything from landscape paintings to portraits, watercolors to sculptures and contemporary to impressionistic styles can be found in this exhibit. It offers a little of something for everyone. The “Decade” collection is scheduled to be displayed only until next Wednesday.

Museum security guard Ed Roseberry is eager for students to join in the festivities on Friday.

“It’s an invitational party for students and the townspeople and is designed to be intriguing enough to bring a good crowd in to the museum,” he said. “[Our hope] is to accustom the many who haven’t been here before by providing an introduction with a party theme. Plus, it’s an opportunity for free food and libation, so why not?”

Three cups bizarre plot twists; two teaspoons sappy Hollywood romance; a handful of Dane Cook word vomit: ingredients for the best movie ever made.

That’s right. Good Luck Chuck changed my life. But then again, what movie about a guy who’s been hexed so that every girl he sleeps with ends up marrying the next man she meets hasn’t?

Cook plays the titular character Charlie Logan, who at the tender age of 13 gets cursed by a Goth girl. The reason: he won’t toss her salad with his utensil during Seven Minutes in Heaven at a birthday party.

Ironically, in the years that follow, Charlie ends up doing the dirty deed with dozens of stick-thin beauties who start to use him as a gateway to matrimonial bliss. The irony continues when, at an ex-girlfriend’s wedding, Charlie meets and falls for Cam (Jessica Alba), an amazingly beautiful penguin trainer who happens to be a complete and utter klutz.

In the courtship that follows, Charlie decides Cam is the girl of his dreams and vows to put to rest the curse that has followed him to the ends of the vaginal earth. Definitely not the beginnings of what I would call a predictable, semi-decent two-hour movie complete with crude humor and sparse laughs.

What caused my love affair with Chuck? Did it start when his fat, obnoxious friend Stu (Dan Fogler) hits an old lady in the back of the head during a game of Frisbee, only to be called “shithead” and have his disc stolen in return? Or when, in an attempt to break the curse, Charlie decides to seduce and bed 400 lb. beast Eleanor Skipple (Jodie Stewart)? Perhaps I fell head over heels during the end credits when Charlie’s uproarious sex tape with a stuffed animal penguin aired. Filmed by Cam, it was wild and sexy enough to rival those of both Pam and Paris – combined. (Seriously, though, I would have paid to see that movie.)

Not to suggest that Good Luck Chuck featured mediocre, average, common, ordinary, run of the mill, nothing-to-write-home-about acting. Dane Cook employed his trademark subtle character study, twitching and stuttering and getting a boner at all the right times. His sex scenes were particularly moving; the time when he tells his portly secretary that all he will be thinking of is her beautiful face when they’re about to do it is downright touching.

Alba is in a league of her own in this film, and should be in talks for Oscar contention once March rolls around. Chuck is Alba’s follow-up work to massive hits like Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and Into the Blue, but she possesses a certain cultured poise in this film that she never mastered previously. Whether it’s walking into a metal pole or getting knocked into a pool by a penguin, Alba asserts herself as an acting force to be reckoned with.

Clearly, I’m being sarcastic. While Chuck was definitely a creative take on the traditional Hollywood love story, it failed to veer from typical B-grade comedic conventions. Cook and Alba have above average onscreen chemistry. Yet they’re not skilled enough as actors to transform a mediocre script into a laugh-out-loud viewing experience. And while usually I’m all for some good ‘ole crude humor, Chuck goes over-the-top in terms of gross-out comedy.

As a red-blooded American male teenager, the movie’s constant nudity made up for most of its flaws; everyone else, good luck getting your money’s worth.

When I was younger I wanted a turtle. To my dismay my parents got me a Tamagotchi and promised me they would get me a turtle eventually. Similarly (vaguely), now that I am older, all I have wanted for years is a new Broken Social Scene album. But to my initial disappointment all I got was Kevin Drew’s new album, Spirit If … The Tamagotchi never really worked out, mostly because it did not have the potential to turn teenage, mutant and ninja like my fantasy turtle. Spirit,however, has exceeded my expectations, plus has not pooped all over itself and died like my ill-fated Tamagotchi.

BSS is a loosely defined collective of ever rotating musicians, mostly from Canada, who create beautiful indie pop music (to put it plainly). Members include Leslie Feist, Emily Haines of Metric, Amy Millan of Stars and members of Do Make Say Think. Although historically a tight-knit group, BSS has at times been volatile. In 2006, following a fall U.S. tour, they went on an indefinite hiatus as many of the members began focusing on solo work.

But they are unofficially back, led by Kevin Drew’s album. Drew, along with Brandon Canning, is a core and founding member of BSS. Spirit represents the first in a line of scheduled releases entitled “Broken Social Scene Presents,” which will highlight individual members’ songwriting and playing styles. Although Spirit is technically a solo effort, meaning all songs are written by Drew, it is performed by BSS, who are currently on tour with Drew in support of the album.

Spirit, being Drew’s first (and perhaps only) solo album, is hard to compare to anything. If I heard the album without knowing the title, I would definitely identify it with BSS. But the music itself actually sounds more similar to K.C. Accidental, Drew’s pre-BSS band with Brandon Canning. The songwriting on Spirit, though, is distinctly Drew.

Perhaps the most stunning and telling track on the album is “Gang Bang Suicide.” About the emotional side of a broken relationship told through physical symbolism, “Gang Bang Suicide” is a blatant follow up to BSS’s “Shampoo Suicide,” making it the most direct comparison of Drew’s style to BSS’s. While “Shampoo Suicide” slowly builds up only to break down into dissonance, “Gang Bang Suicide” stays steady and clear throughout. But deep down, the songs are similar in meaning, sound and ridiculous titles.

Despite the album’s distinct Kevin-Drew aura, he makes sure not to leave out his friends (which is, actually, also typical of Drew). “Safety Bricks” sounds a lot like Feist’s “Past In Present,” which is not necessarily a bad thing, and may possibly be purposeful, considering the two are currently dating. “Backed Out On The…” features J. Mascis and basically sounds like a Dinosaur Jr. song, which is also not necessarily a bad thing.

Honestly though, as clichéd and (almost) stupid as it sounds, Spirit should not really be broken down by track. The album melds into a whole and complete piece of art, which is much of what makes BSS so great to listen to. There may not be another true collaborative BSS album in years, but if the rest of the “BSS Presents” series is vaguely similar to Spirit If…, I think we will all be able to get by.