April 7, 2003 rather than voting people out. Two contestants form the Outlast Competition get their fight on in the Cardboard Tube Samurai Tournament. Outlast is a Survivor-like contest, in which people who lose games are eliminated, Photo Dana Schwehr Megs Movie Pics Basic: Tom Hardy, an ex-Army Ranger turned DEA agent, is drawn into an ever-widening mystery surrounding the disap- pearance of the feared, and often hated, Sgt. Nathan West (Samuel Jackson). It appears, at first, to have been a routine training exer- cise during a hurricane in the jun- gles of Panama. Only two sur- vivors are found: Dunbar and a badly wounded Kendall, the son of a high-profile Joint Chiefs of Staff official. Neither is willing to cooperate with Capt. Julia Osborne’s investigation, so the base commander, Col. Bill Styles, calls in ex-Ranger Hardy, an old friend and a persuasive interroga- tor. Osborne disapproves of Hardy who is on leave from the D.E.A. after having come under suspicion of accepting bribes from local drug traffickers. She is . also uneasy when she learns that Hardy once trained under West and hates him almost as passion- ately as his current recruits. With time running out, Hardy and Osborne call a temporary, if uneasy, truce. Hardy rattles a con- fession out of Dunbar, who claims that Sgt. West and the missing Rangers have been murdered and their bodies blown away by the hurricane. When they later inter- view Kendall, he confirms that the other Rangers and West are dead. But, in almost every other way, his story contradicts Dunbar’s. What happened to West and his Ranger team? And what were they really doing way out there in the jungle? As each layer reveals more lies and greater deceptions, Hardy and Osborne inch towards the horri- ble truth about the fate of the missing Rangers. This movie was a little confus- ing but once it finally unfolded it all started to make sense. It is also hard to figure out who are the good guys and who are the bad guys... does anyone else wonder why the bad guys never win? I give this one 3.5/5 The Core: Like everything else in the world, stuff breaks down. Well, it is now apparently the earths turn. For unknown reasons, the earth’s inner core has stopped spinning; causing a severe and rapid deterioration of the electro- magnetic field which acts as a solar shield for the planet. Dr. Josh Keyes (Aaron Eckhart) is the man who discovers this and hopes to God he is wrong. With the help of a genius (played by Stanley Tucci), Dr. Keyes confirms the problem and goes to the gov- ernment. Without this electro- magnetic field, electrical super- storms will become a daily sight and microwaves will eventually literally cook the planet. All over the globe weird things start to happen: people with pacemakers die and even the birds start to go crazy. Scrambling to resolve the crisis, the earth’s government and military officials call upon geo- physicist Dr. Josh Keyes. A team of the world’s most gifted scien- tists are then invited to travel into the earth’s core in a subterranean craft piloted by terranauts Major Rebecca Childs (Hilary Swank) and Commander Robert Iverson (Bruce Greenwood). Their mis- _ sion is to detonate a nuclear *device that will hopefully re-acti- vate the core and save the world | from sure destruction. This movie was good. A few things seemed a LOT like Armageddon, but nothing will be as good as that one was. It was enjoyable, and also something else to think about in a world that seems so uncertain. 4/5 Well this is the last article of the year, good luck to everyone on exams and have a great summer! And thanks for reading Meg’s Movie Picks. See you in September. Page 7 ’m an Evil Pirate! Why EMI already hates me By Josh Hammerstedt As a sexy cartoonist, music is my lifeblood. I use it to keep the real world out of my head while I draw, and I enjoy few things more than a really good record. So imagine my surprise when I found out that this hobby makes - me nothing more than a common criminal! Acouple of weeks ago, I picked up “The Music” at HMV. I throw the CD into my computer - the only player I have - which makes whirry-grindy noises for a few seconds, then informs me that the CD has ten songs (true), and that each of these is about nine years long (suspicious). This is when I find out that I can’t play the CD on my computer without installing the propriety music player included on the disc! Oh no! It’s asking me to install soft- ware without telling me what it'll do to my computer first! Important note here: when dealing with unknown program installations, ALWAYS disconnect your internet, just in case. I install the program, and it opens a tiny little player window that sports both unreadable con- trols that only sometimes work (a little), and a promise that I am indeed a music pirate, even if I never knew it or suspected it or did anything even remotely simi- lar to piracy in my entire life. The other major feature of this little player? It tries, all on its own and without any permission from me, to REGISTER ME AS THE LEGAL OWNER OF THE CD OVER THE INTERNET. See, this is where the whole “disconnect your internet” thing comes in handy. This copy protection scheme, it turns out, is EMI’s new anti-pira- cy plan, designed to stop evil criminals like me from copying my CD and emailing it to every- one I’ve ever known, even casual- ly, since the third grade. This strategy is reportedly going to be adopted by most other major- label record companies as well, whose actions are dictated by their motto: “if it moves, it’s a filthy pirate!” I'm worried that this copy pro- tection trend might continue, in which case I may have to stop buying CDs for fear of losing my rights as a consumer. Imagine not being able to buy music? I'd have to make my own or some- thing. Ick. I don’t know what the hell I’d do then. For now, though, I’m going to try to take this faulty CD back. And, justin case HMV isn’t allowed to take it back (“we don’t do business with filthy pirates!”), I’ve already figured out a way to make a high-quality copy of “The Music” that will work in any CD player on Earth, and won't try to send any of my computer data, personal informa-— tion, or internal organs to record companies. After all, I didn’t pay for this album to NOT listen to it. In the meantime, I should take EMI's advice and buy some pan- taloons. 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