by Cooper Torrez | Sep 21, 2011 | News Slider, Sports
The start of the college football season has been full of surprises and disappointments. Both Tennessee and Vanderbilt started Saturday 2-0 and only one team ended the day 3-0. However, it was the team most would not have suspected. Vanderbilt beat Ole Miss by the final of 30-7 on Saturday. The Commodores scored 21 points in the second quarter in route to a rare, but easy, win at Vanderbilt Stadium. Quarterback Larry Smith started the scoring with a 19 yard touchdown run and then a minute later defensive back Trey Wilson put the Commodores up 14-0 after a 52 yard interception return for a touchdown. At the end of the third quarter, Vandy running back Zac Stacy put the game out of reach with a 77 yard touchdown run. The big win was strongly attributed to Vandy’s five takeaways. “By nature we are an aggressive defense. We do quite a bit of blitzing and movement and things like that,” Vandy defensive coordinator told the Tennessean on Saturday. “I thought our guys did a good job creating havoc up front and doing things like that so, that’s important to us to be disruptive.” The Commodores take their 3 game winning streak on the road next week as they look to go 4-0. They face the 12th ranked South Carolina Gamecocks Saturday in Columbia. The other SEC team in Tennessee did not fare so well on Saturday. The Vols took on Florida in “The Swamp.” The game didn’t start well for Volunteer fans as star wideout Justin Hunter left the game after the first series with an ACL tear and is...
by Cory Woodroof | Sep 20, 2011 | News Slider
I really don’t think there is anything Brad Pitt can’t do. While some uneducated film-goers may write him off as one of Hollywood’s hollow “pretty boys”, most film lovers recognize that Pitt is one of the best actors in cinema right now. In Moneyball (based off the novel Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game), Pitt takes the reigns and delivers a fantastic performance as Billy Beane, the GM of the Oakland A’s. Billy Beane’s life revolves around baseball. He, in his glory days, was a star baseball player who was taken into the major leagues right out of high school. Beane’s journey in the major leagues drives his desire for success. Now the manager for a mediocre organization, he loses three major players and looks ahead to the future. His world is turned upside down when he meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill). Brand, a scout for a rival organization, has a method of baseball that will change the method of scouting (and baseball) forever. Beane is quick to take Brand away from his old job and offer him a position with the A’s. The duo work together to craft a great team on the A’s meager budget and prove their naysayers wrong. The film follows the A’s 2002 season, as well as gives a striking character study of Beane. This is not just a movie about baseball. This is an engrossing look into the life of a man who is willing to do everything he can to be successful, even if it means approaching a radical method of carrying out business. The film itself depends on Pitt’s...
by Aaron Schmelzer | Sep 20, 2011 | News Slider
When Belmont chose the theme “Liberating Voices” for its 10th annual humanities symposium, there was really only one choice for the keynote speaker — a woman whose voice was set free after being held captive for years. On Monday night at the Curb Event Center, Maya Angelou took the stage. Before a sold-out crowd, Angelou spent the evening telling stories, laughing and reciting poetry. She played up her love for country music to the Nashville audience, beginning with lyrics to an old Kitty Wells country song — “When it looked like the sun wasn’t going to shine any more, God put a rainbow in the clouds.” And Angelou knows about the days of clouds. As a child, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. She fell silent for six years, instead choosing to read poetry and listen to it in her head. She recalled seeing a famous actor give a reading of “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe — “Eep,” as she called him — and being sorely disappointed by his delivery. “That’s not how it sounds! I know how it goes,” she said, surprising the audience by rapping the first few stanzas. But even that wasn’t enough to give Angelou her voice back. It took some convincing from one of her personal “rainbows” to nudge her back into the light. “You will never love poetry until you speak it,” Angelou’s mentor told her just before she turned 13. And the little girl who would grow up to be the voice of a generation spoke again for the first time. “Be a rainbow,” Angelou urged the audience. “Don’t just live in one and be...
by Emily Snell | Sep 20, 2011 | News Slider
The latest episode of Tokens, a theological variety show created by Lipscomb’s Dr. Lee Camp, is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22 at the Downtown Presbyterian Church. Lipscomb SGA announced Monday that it would sell tickets for a discounted price of $5. The show, “Singing Down the Pain: The Civil War,” includes special guests Odessa Settles, The Whites, Buddy Greene, a combined male chorus from The Nashville Choir and The Greater Nashville Community Gospel Choir, along with the Most Outstanding Horeb Mountain Boys comprising celebrated Nashville musicians Jeff Taylor, Aubrey Haynie, Pete Huttlinger, Byron House and Chris Brown. Kenneth Coca, a senior biochemistry major and cello performance minor, performed in last year’s show and is a musician again this year. “I’m not one of the big wigs,” Coca said. “I’m just doing this for my own fun and to help out a good cause.” Coca is playing cello in a quartet Thursday night with Joel Campbell, a junior music major, and two students from Belmont. He said he thinks Tokens is a good way to share the gospel message in a non-church setting. “I really believe in the message,” he said. “They’re spreading the gospel of Christ through music. I think that’s something that a community needs.” Thursday’s production serves as a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the U.S. Civil War and will feature themes from that era including “the longing for justice and peace, the slaves’ longing for freedom and the triumph over the auction block and the parents’ grief that their sons will no longer return from war.” The show will take place at Downtown Presbyterian...
by Kathryn Claire Watts | Sep 19, 2011 | News Slider
On Sunday night, Netflix announced yet another change in its setup. The company is now offering two separate websites, one for instant streaming, the other for DVD rentals. This announcement comes after the major price hike that hit news feeds in July finally calmed down. Students are both confused and angered by the changes, which leaves us wondering if the major movie distributor will make it out of this pitfall. In July, Netflix announced that it was splitting its offerings into “DVD Rental Only” and “Instant Streaming Only,” both $7.99 each. If you kept both, the price was increased to $15.98 a month, an approximately 60 percent price increase from the previous $9.99 (for the streaming and one disc out at a time option). Now, Netflix has issued another statement saying it is going to split the company into two entities, instant streaming will still go by “Netflix,” while the DVD rental website will be titled “Qwikster.” Customers can choose one or the other, but if you choose both, your credit card will be billed separately, at $8 a piece (not including taxes) by each company. Separate sites also mean that you will have to manage separate queues for each. These changes have caused frustration for many customers. “The Netflix changes are dumb and confusing,” said Page DeVere, a junior social work major from Fort Myers, Fla. “I don’t know how to respond to them. The price hike was bad enough, but the company split is really upsetting. I don’t want another company to have my credit card information. I would just cancel the DVD service, but not all...
