Dear Sassy,
I care for my boyfriend very much, but he has some issues. He gets very upset over miniscule things. He’ll get ridiculously jealous one moment and then he’ll suddenly get depressed. Every time I call him out on his out-of-control mood changes and anger issues, he blames his depression that, he says, runs in his family. He’ll then get impatient with me for not understanding his “condition”. I care for him, but I’m getting tired of riding his emotional roller coaster. What do I do?
Sincerely,
Languished lover

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On Feb. 11, The Tech Theatre Company opened their production of David Auburn’s Proof in the McArdle Theater, directed by MTU Theater Department chair Roger Held. The play, which won the 2001 Tony award for Best Play in its original Broadway performance, was warmly received by the audience.
The Tech Theatre Company’s production starred Nicole Kangas as Catherine, a mathematical genius dealing with mental illness; Dennis Kerwin as Robert, Catherine’s recently deceased father who contributed groundbreaking theories to several branches of mathematics; Frank Sopjes as Hal, a student of Robert, and Trish Goggin as Clare, Catherine’s sister.
Proof deals with the toll of Catherine’s efforts to support her mentally ill father, Clare’s efforts to support them both, and the relationships between Hal and both Catherine and her father. In the end, the play subtlety explores the meaning of “proof” in different contexts, from mathematics to trust.
The play had been in production since the beginning of the semester, Held explained. However, he remarked that amount of time was “not long enough” and although everyone involved did a good job of getting everything together in four weeks, they would have preferred six.
The play, like most events, had been planned since last year, like most events. When asked why Proof was chosen in particular, Held explained that there were a number of reasons. One of them was that it was a small show, within the Tech Theatre Company’s ability to produce. Another thing that motivated decisions on all plays was the ability to cast the play. Held explained that they look for plays that go well with the actors they have. In this case, having an older actor to play the part of Robert was nice, because he could serve as a role model for the younger actors.
Finally, the play was chosen because it was a good piece of literature. “It’s an inherently interesting idea,” Held explained, referring to the meaning of proof in different contexts.
Proof will be shown two more times in the McArdle Theater, on February 18 and 19 at 7:30 pm. It will then travel to the Calumet Theater, where it will be shown on February 27 at 7:30 pm.

The year 2009 provided many highlights from the silver screen. These include the awe-inspiring debut of Avatar and the death of Adolf Hitler in Inglourious Basterds, among other moments. Also included in this are hidden gems, such as A Serious Man and The Hurt Locker, and innovative cartoon epics Up and Fantastic Mr. Fox. Overall, this has been one of the best years in recent memory for Hollywood. Here are my picks for the top movies of 2009.
1. A Serious Man
Possibly the most overlooked film of this past year, which is also a personal ode to the Coen’s Jewish upbringing in 1960s Minneapolis. Michael Stuhlbarg plays Larry Gopnik, a Jewish physics professor who watches his life spiral out of control. He seemingly lives a life reminiscent of Job (from the Old Testament), as bad things continually happen. Events include his wife requesting a divorce, his appointment for tenure being up in the air, his brothers legal problems, amongst many other things. The film leaves more questions than answers at the end, as the Coen’s leave the ending up for intepereation. With that having been said, it’s a unique film in that Hollywood doesn’t always tackle issues involving religion.
2. Avatar
After watching Avatar, I’m convinced that James Cameron’s 12 year absence from film was well worth it. The film is literally great on experience alone, however, I was extremely impressed with the plot and the character development, which normally are ignored in blockbuster films. Scottish actor Sam Worthington plays Jake Sully, a former marine who is brought to Pandora. He undergoes a transformation in the movie to become part of the Navi, eventually taking on the humans who brought him to Pandora for their colonization of the planet.
3. Inglourious Basterds
One of the most creative efforts of the year is this film. Quentin Tarantino mixes in a lot of tongue-in-cheek humor along with his usual blood, guts, and gore, and in the process pulls off what many thought was impossible: a film contemplating the Nazi upper echelon being overthrown. Christoph Waltz, in particular, stands out as a nihilistic SD officer who literally “kills” people with his kindness. Also worthy of mention is Brad Pitt as 1st Lt. Aldo Raine, a Tennessee born soldier with an extreme liking for killing Nazi soldiers.
4. Fantastic Mr. Fox
The second film of Fall 2009 to adapt a children’s book (the other being Where the Wild Things Are), Fantastic Mr. Fox stands out as one of the best examples of a film that can delight both adult and kids audiences alike. George Clooney provides the voice for the title character, with other voice performances from Bill Murray, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman, and others. Particular attention should be paid to the animation, as director Wes Anderson employed the use of stop-motion in making this film, while mixing in other types of animation as well,
5.The Hurt Locker
This film should be familiar to some Michigan Tech students, as the Michigan Tech Filmboard screened this film during fall semester. Jeremy Renner gives an amazing performance as a cocky Staff Seargent assigned with the seemingly innocuous task of leading a team that dismantles IEDs in war torn, post-invasion Iraq. Also headlining the somewhat non-descript cast are Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, and Guy Pearce, with cameo appearances from Ralph Fiennes and David Morse. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow.

After an intial limited theater release, The Lovely Bones will debut nationwide on Friday Jan. 15. The film stars Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as the parents of a murdered child. Also featured in the film is Saoirse Ronan as their deceased child, as well as Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon, and Michael Imperioli.
The film is about a girl, Susie Salmon (Ronan) who is murdered by her neighboy George Harvey (Tucci). Upon Susie’s death, from on high, she observes the shattering of what remains of her family, namely her parents Jack and Abigail (Wahlberg and Weisz, respectively), who gradually drift apart of the murder of their daughter. She also observes her killer preparing to strike again.
This marks director Peter Jackson’s first film as a director since 2005 blockbuster “King Kong.” Although this film isn’t as grand in scale as The Lord of The Rings trilogy, adapting the screenplay from Alice Sebold’s novel presented challenges in it’s own way.
“One of the challenges that we’re discovering now is that, when you’re adapting, you know you’ve got to realize that you’re only going to get half the book into the movie,” said Jackson in a conference call with student media organizations, including the Lode. “You’ve got to start making decisions about what the most important aspects of the book are.”
Jackson also commented on the intended audience of the film, and the importance of leaving it open for a broad group of people. Specifically mentioned was his intent to keep the film from receiving an “R” rating, and how he wished to make the film in a way so that his own daughter could watch it.
“We wanted it to be a PG-13. We didn’t want to make an R-rated movie,” said Jackson. “We’ve got a daughter who was 12 years old when we made the movie, she’s 13 now. And we wanted her to see this film.”
On particular actors that he really enjoyed working with during the project, Jackson turned his attention to Michael Imperioli, a former castmember of The Sopranos, who plays a detective in the film.
“Interestingly enough, I worked with Mike Imperioli as well, and we cast him, because he did an audition for us, and we thought he was terrific,” said Jackson. “He was a great actor, too, a really nice guy.

For the past two weeks, the Tech Theater Company has performed a rather different style of play. Theater of the Absurd was the theme as the Company put on two of the Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco’s one-act plays: The Bald Soprano and The Lesson. The Company had been rehearsing the plays since the first week of school, according to actress Lauren Dedow, who played the part of the maid in The Lesson. The plays attracted a fair amount of interest: as of the third performance over one hundred people had attended, and even more attended the remaining performances.
The Bald Soprano was the first play to be performed. One of the most-performed plays in France, and holding a record for the greatest number of interpretations, The Bald Soprano showcases an evening of a stylized British couple and their guests for the night. The play is notable for its non-sequiturs and nonsensical dialogue, including a line how the characters “ate our British salad” and “drank our British water,” and an infamous scene in which the characters discuss multiple individuals named Bobby Watson, without ever seeming to notice the absurdity of having so many people all named Bobby Watson. The play also took the interesting step of displaying certain stage directions on a screen above the stage, which allowed the audience to see how the stage directions further tied into the theme (“The clock strikes seventeen British strokes”).
Following a ten-minute intermission, the performance resumed with The Lesson. In contrast to The Bald Soprano, which primarily focuses on the humor in absurdity, The Lesson explores the dark side of the absurd. The story of a professor taking on an eager new pupil, the play initially seems to be another absurd-humor play as the gaps in the student’s education become apparent. Yet, as the play goes on, the professor’s reactions become increasingly disturbed, and the play becomes increasingly dark, until the very end, which results in a twist ending that exemplifies the concept of the Theater of the Absurd.
Overall, the performances went fairly well. There were certainly a few minor issues, such as the fake English accents of the actors’ in The Bald Soprano occasionally slipping, but they did not generally detract too much from the quality of the performance.
The Tech Theater Company’s next performance will be Vaster than Empires, a collection of stories by science-fiction writer Ursula K LeGuin. It will be shown Nov. 12-14.

This cheesily-titled memoir of former James Bond actor Sir Roger Moore details his rise from the son of a police scene-draughtsman, amateur magician, and housewife, through Hollywood bit-player and knitwear catalogue model, to textile executive, Saint and knight. Written in a very straightforward style, the more than occasionally salty book shines with the self-deprecating author’s “terrible practical jokes and schoolboy humour,” surprisingly so, given a life clouded by three divorces and the suicides of many people he knew.
Filled with aptly-textured details of a London boyhood with horse-chestnut games and constant uprooting during the Blitz and seemingly endless trips to the hospital, it progresses to his career in Westerns, Ivanhoe and as Bond.
Throughout, the reader can all but taste the tobacco he describes with a connoisseur’s discernment (he later quit cigarettes but not cigars and became an anti-smoking advocate), the food (including eggs, about which he is particular) can all but see lavish sets and oak-paneled houses, steam rising from raincoats, a dogfight appearing overhead as he swims in a flooded quarry, hear swordplay and glimpse the mysterious and verdant vales of Wales.
The name-dropping is mind-boggling – from Mae West to William Shatner, from Noël Coward to Ronald Reagan, from Elvis Presley to the King and Queen of Sweden. He worked with a disappointingly nice Richard Kiel (Jaws in the Bond films), Jane Seymour (not Henry VIII’s wife), James Mason and Miss Piggy (with whom he confesses a brief relationship). The book is jam-packed with amusing, and, rarely tragic anecdotes about bush babies, “flightless” parrots, crocodiles, double-shadowed noses and amazing stunts, air travel’s history, the advantages of film over video and insights into Bond’s character. The author doesn’t shy away from controversy, from Maurice Binder’s risqué credits to Moore’s filming in apartheid South Africa. Where it is strongest, however, is in its description of the horrors he encountered on his tireless work as an ambassador for UNICEF, particularly against iodide deficiency, and in his country-by-country travelogue at the end.
Moore, asked what he wanted to be when he grew up, said he didn’t want to work. Thus, even as he has been pelted by fake snow including “six inch nails and lumps of wood,” it is appropriate how often he has lived in a spirit of adventure and creativity. Though sometimes he doesn’t come off well in his own book, more important is this spirit, which animates it over and again.

The Michigan Tech volleyball team’s hopes of getting farther in the NCAA Tournament than in 2006 were crushed by a motivated Saginaw Valley State University team on Nov. 21.

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After a tough Tuesday night loss to Northern Michigan University, the Michigan Tech women’s volleyball team was on the road looking for a few wins this weekend. While the women took hosting Grand Valley State University to five games, they fell in the closer, 15-9. However, Saturday brought revenge for Michigan Tech and handed head coach Krista Mikesch her first win over Ferris State University in the nine seasons that she has been with the Huskies. Again, the match included five games, but Michigan Tech came out on top 15-10 in the final.

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Rebounding, a term typically used in basketball, is a reasonable term to be used in explaining the women’s tennis Huskies’ season, especially on Saturdays. This past weekend was another example of this, with the Huskies drubbing the Tiffin Dragons, 9-0, after dropping a disappointing 7-2 match with the Ashland Eagles on Friday.

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I fancy myself as being an amateur movie critic. I own in the vicinity of 100 films and cherish every single one of them. However, out of all the movies I own, one film has made more of an impact on my life than any other film. This film has gotten me through some of the toughest days that college has thrown at me, and pretty much sums up my attitude about facing adversity.

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