The James Logan Courier

By Joe Williams
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MCT)

This holiday season, the multiplex smells like a manger. Just as puppies and kittens are arriving under Christmas trees, movies with critter characters are arriving in theaters.

Pulling the wagon is "War Horse," Steven Spielberg's battlefield epic about a stalwart stallion that is conscripted into World War I. The movie opens nationwide on Christmas Day.

The menagerie in the heart-tugging true story "We Bought a Zoo" features more than 70 trained animals, including lions, tigers, and Crystal, the capuchin monkey from "The Hangover: Part II."
Virtual varmints hog the spotlight in the 'toons "Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked" and "Puss in Boots."

By Tish Wells
McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

Somewhere out there, there's a version of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" where clerk Bob Cratchit takes an axe to his employer, Scrooge, steals his cashbox and escapes to the Bahamas without his family. The story has been reinterpreted time and time again in stage, screen, animation, book and probably ancient Greek.

Now Batman (aka the Dark Knight) meets Charles Dickens in "Batman: Noel" a graphic novel by artist Lee Bermejo. (For those who read comics only irregularly, a graphic novel is a glossy-papered comic published as a book, dust cover and all.)

The original story penned in 1843 by Charles Dickens was a hit. The story of a stingy old miser who is visited by three ghosts who change his ways, making him into a generous open-handed philanthropist, is a Christmas-time staple.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

There's plenty to like about "Kung-Fu High Impact." It is, in fact, one of the year's better Kinect games, and one of the few that reaches past the realm of fitness tools and minigame collections to produce an actual game that tangibly benefits from Microsoft's motion control device.

Just don't be surprised if some of the most fun you have with it is when you have a controller in hand.

"Impact" is a 2D brawler somewhat in the vein of "Double Dragon," "Final Fight" and any number of other games that propagated during the genre's heyday. The stages are small but open-ended instead of large but constantly scrolling from left to right, but the gist — punch and kick the bad guys into submission before they do it to you first — remains the same.

By Jack Bragg, Courier Entertainment Editor

Before their Grammy award winning album, Brothers, The Black Keys were a relatively unknown band formed from two guys out of Acron, Ohio. Now, with their seventh follow-up record,El Camino, the Black Keys have well established themselves as one of the most respectable and promising groups of the 21st century.

Formed from long time friends Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney, the group has expanded their sound from the raw guitar/drums/vocals sound that got them on the music scene. With last year’s critically acclaimed album, Brothers, the group had expanded to include a bass and keyboard. El Camino expands even further with a more produced sound and addition of a chorus of background singers on several songs. This change does not at all detract from the raw, rusty blues feel the band gives and only affects the music positively. This new sound can be partially attributed to co-producer Danger Mouse of Gnarls Barkley and Broken Bells fame.

By Justyna Torres, Courier Editor-in-Chief

Greyson Chance, up and coming singer and songwriter, released an impressive debut album showing not only a full range of vocal abilities but songs anybody can relate to. Hold on ‘Til the Night tells a story of the trials and tribulations of a teenage romance. Chance takes you on a journey from break up and despair to the realizing of his own self worth.

Chance has had a very rapid climb to stardom, that all started with a YouTube video. In April 2010, Chance, then 13 years old, performed Lady Gaga’s “Paparazzi” at a school choir event. That now famous performance became Youtube’s number three most popular video of 2010. The video went viral almost immediately. His stunning vocals and impeccable piano skills impressed people world wide, including his now executive producer Ellen DeGeneres.

By Jessica Li, Courier Features Editor

When is video gaming and computer use too much? In this modern world, technology is king in developed countries. There are many people who like to use computers for internet, research, entertainment and more. It seems like the internet has everything on it. Computer and video game use may become compulsive, necessary, and difficult to manage.

Video game overuse or addiction is excessive or compulsive use of video or computer games that interferes with daily life. While it is not an official disorder, it can cause social withdrawal, bad decision-making, irresponsibility, harm one's health, and even be a cause of death.

By Billy O'Keefe
McClatchy-Tribune (MCT)

Every motion control system needs its own collection of carnival-themed mini-games, and "Carnival Island" would appear to be the Playstation 3's me-too equivalent. But the hand-drawn animation that opens the game's story mode suggests there's more to this collection than simple imitation, and while that isn't all the way true, it bears out to an encouraging degree.
"Island" features seven carnival standbys — frog bog, skeeball, hoops, coin/ring/baseball toss and shooting gallery — in its base offerings, and because the Move controller is just plain more precise than the Wii remote or Kinect, the games work exactly as you'd expect and respond to your motions precisely as they should.

The responsive controls are, naturally, "Island's" most important virtue. But the game's best asset lies in the way it breaks from convention in designing 28 additional games simply by rearranging those seven base games.

By Howard Cohen, McClatchy Newspapers (MCT)

"Like smoke, I stick around," Winehouse rasps on a tune of the same name on her first posthumous release since her death in July at age 27.

As a pop culture figure, Winehouse will stick around in people's imaginations for some time. She was a formidable talent and left a huge impression. "Lioness: Hidden Treasures," a collection of odds-'n'-ends recorded from 2002 through this year's duet of "Body and Soul" with Tony Bennett for his standards album, "Duets II" (and repeated here) doesn't make a strong case that she would have outdone her classic 2006 breakthrough "Back to Black."

By Yari Nieves-Rivera, Courier Staff Writer

In An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, Colin is a very confused child prodigy, torn between being an average adult and wanting to be extraordinary. Throughout his young life he has had to deal not only with the being an outcast among his peers for his intelligence, but also having a crush on certain girls named Katherine. At the tender age of eighteen, Colin has dated over nineteen girls—all named Katherine. They also have a tendency to dump him in the end.

At the beginning of the book, Colin, whose hobby is anagramming, has been dumped by his last girlfriend, deemed in this book as Katherine XIX, after
graduating and goes into a deep depression which his supportive parents just do not understand. Only his best friend of four years, Hassan Harbish, understands what he’s feeling and, through jokes and hilarity, that the only solution is going on a road trip. Colin’s desperate need for a distraction quickly drags him into a car with his best friend, for the trip of a life time.

By Maria Soldana, Courier Staff Writer

In James Logan Drama's most recently performed play, The Diviners, Buddy Layman, played by junior Skyler Lee, is a young boy who nearly loses his life in a river while with his mother drowns. Buddy is left traumatized by this near death experience and develops a horrible fear of all water.

A former priest, C.C. Showers, played by Marcos Enriquez, comes along to Buddy's house looking for a job and tries helping Buddy get over his grand fear of water. In the end, Showers is successful because he gets Buddy to get into a river to wash, something Buddy doesn't do much on account of his fear. Showers turns his attention away from Buddy to yell at a group of women who believe that he is still a priest is baptizing Buddy. Tragedy ensues.

By Jack Bragg, Courier Entertainment Editor

Sigh No More is the title of Irish newcomers Mumford & Sons and has so far gained major critical success. One of the key reasons for this critical success is in the band’s use of incredible lyrics and thought provoking phrases. One may also notice in many of the lyrics a certain familiarity with some of them. That is because Mumford & Sons borrows heavily from classic literature to make their music, and the combination comes off brilliantly.

The album title itself, Sigh No More, is a reference to Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. In the play Balthasar plays a similar song by the same name, and Mumford & Son's song borrows heavily from the Shakespeare version. The title-track often borrows entire lines from the lyrics in the play or from other parts of the play in general. Some of these lines include, “One foot on land, one on shore” “Man is a giddy thing” and “Serve God, love me, and mend”.