166 The icy gin '=r C i y A , 6 Ask -Ai . u ....r . . . _ .1 e et . Migazln0': ' h s'd , 8 Pf robe: 23:, 3199 The Micg~nL ~~keti,~t&1~ga~ne TI~sdy, epteber2~ 99~Th4Mici~ga Oa$~-Weeend et. t P Michi gan Dail- V 6ekend, eta. 'Ma Students awash in options for linking up etc Movies of the Decade - #10 Egoyan renders taste of real life in bitterswc -now By Thanh Tran For the Daily As the days grow chillier and the specter of midterms looms its ugly head, many students begin thinking wistfully of the balmy days of sum- mer However. for some of us. returning to Ann Arbor means being reunited with one of the most crucial conveniences of academia - free internet access. For the e-mail addicts out there, four months without the joys of Pine are absolute torture. Luckily, corpo- SAM OLENSHED/Dai y Anrea Quist, freshman who ivesu ~rsley studies for her Great Books course. rate America is there to pick up the slack, and for a small fee, those who absolutely must remain connected can make sure they don't miss a sin- gle forwarded message. The K-mart of internet service providers (ISPs) is America Online, which claims to have 18 million members. The standard plan costs 521.95 per month, and comes with unlimited access, e-mail, and web hosting services. For those who already have the latter and only need access, there's a S9.95 a month plan which offers nothing else. Because of massive marketing and easy user interface, AOL is the choice for many internet newbies, and recent investments in infrastruc- ture have alleviated some of the con- nection problems that have recently plagued users. Users can sign up for a free trial membership by picking up one of the ubiquitous CD-RO's, or going to http://www.aol.com. Challenging AOL's dominance in the online market- is MSN (http://w ww.rsn. com), brought to you by the nice folks at Microsoft. For a slightly lower fee (S19.95), you wan get unlimited internet access, e- mail, and web hosting. However, there are no alternate plans, so your options are rather lim. ited. MSN promises high-speed internet access in all the areas it ser- vices, and like AOL, has a month- long free trial. Both services offer a variety of services besides just internet access. Customizable financial planning, news, .online shopping, and, of course, chat rooms are available to while away* any spare hours. AOL frequently brings in musicians, writ- ers, and other celebrities for special chat sessions, where fans can fight for the honor of talking to anyone from Korn to Pokemon. If you're in the mood for a kinder, gentler, ISP, there are dozens of other options, some of which will even give you access for free in exchange for placing a few ads on your desk- top. Http://wwwthelist.com offers a comprehensive listing of ISPs across the country. So whether you are an internet junkie, or merely trying to prevent 500 messages from accumu- lating in the your inbox while you're away from the university, there's an ISP ready to get you connected and onto the internet in minutes. 0 Phoenix Services is presently recruiting for the following positions: 40 Administrative Assistants-Receptionists, Data Entry Clerks, Bookkeepers- Accounting Specialists-Customer Service Representatives, General Office- Light Industrial-Fork Truck Drivers, Production/Assembly Positions. We offer SAME WEEK PAY, profit sharing, paid vacations, holiday pay, referral bonuses, medical benefits and free software training. Please call to schedule an immediate interview and learn more about our $100.00 BONUS. (734)214-9400 Phone (734)214-1591 Fax 160 1 Briarwood Circle, Suite #450 P110 CIIX Ann Arbor, Ml 48108 SE RVICES 11 By Erin Podolsky Dails Arts Writer I saw Atom Egoyan's "The Sweet Hereafter" one fine blustery New York City day, alone, retreating from the mis- cellaneous pathetic miseries of my life. I walked out a different person. Where once I had been unsure of my path, I was certain. Perfection was possible. There was a reason that I was obsessed with fic- tions that existed only in two dimensions, only in darkened rooms. And the reason was this: For the thousands of obsequious popcorn-plot movies out there, there existed one that was sublime, that took everything I ever thought about life, death and the things in between and turned them into a brilliant, shining truth. in the sparsely populated, snowbound town of Sam Dent, a terrible random act has taken place. It is not an act of kind- ness. The town's lone school bus slips on a patch of ice; the brakes fail, the driver loses control and it plunges over the road railing into the ice-watery depths. It is full of children. The town's children. Only a handful survive, and the bereaved parents and spared children are left to pick up the pieces., A lawyer, an intruder, comes to Sam Dent. He attempts to sign the grieving families up for a class-action lawsuit. His motivation is both pit-bull financial gain WCBN Continued from Page 46 The station's multitude of records exists for a reason. According to Tusciuk, it is important to keep an open mind about music from any area. Willingness to try new tracks and open new doors is neces- sarv as "open-mindedness is something our DJ's already come in with," he said. Music is ovenhelmingly the focus of WCBN. Howexer the station does run student-produced news programs and some syndicated alternative news pro- grams. Other times. the station will show- case local bands live on air. Talk on WCBN is light, as most DJ's who run their own music programs will introduce a song and briefly talk about it, occasion- ally playing an entire album in one sit- ting. And when there's that much leeway given to the D, a case of on-the-air nerves comes infrcquently. What they talk about is their passion, after all. Tussins said his enthusiasm about a track will spill out as he addresses his audience. "Just about eerv song I play on the air, I'm like, -vou got to hear this,"' he said. But there is also the sense of learning that he shares with his audience. It's not unusual for Tussins to play something he has never heard or come across before. It's not always good. "At times. I go. 'I can't believe I just played that. That sucked,' he said. Tusciuk believes Ann Arbor is erv receptive to the alternative style of WCBN and the unconventional approach it takes in bringing together music of all types under one roof "The people who listen to WCBN lis- ten to it for a reason: because they want to," he said. "We want to introduce peo- ple to new things. For the tradition here is to be untraditional" and deeply personal, an attempt to sal- vage what he can from the loss of his own child through the recompense of other parents that he believes he is psychologi- cal kin to. Whether he is justified in feel- ing that brotherhood of tragedy or is a lousy ambulance chaser trading on suf- fering is as indeterminate in the film as it is in our own lives. There are other characters in this morose, wintry play. A mechanic whose wife died several years earlier follows his twin children on the bus in his pickup truck every morning. It is an image far more haunting than any big ship sinking beneath the sea, the mixture of shock, anguish and loss of control on his face as he watches in horror as his children. smiling, waving, are entombed in the school bus. It is the defining moment of the film, a stricken look of pure human- ness that drives right to the core of what "The Sweet Hereafter" tells us. We have no control over anything. We watch the people we love more than life itself plunge into an abyss where we cannot help them. Terrible things happen to innocent people. There is no rhyme or reason to real life. And that is why the genius of "The Sweet Hereafter" is that, at the film's end, nobody has picked up the pieces save one girl, a survivor of the ctash. But even she is scarred beyond repair. forced to start from scratch and reevaluate her life. There are no neat little endings wrapped up with bows. There are no moments of tension-relieving catharsis beyond the most subtle of glances. No dead people come back, no lives return to normal "Things get covered up," sputters the lawyer. "People lie" And that, in its way, is the solemn truth of our own lives. Things get covered up. People lie. But what happens when you can't lie any longer because the truth is so vividly painful that it can no longer be shoved aside? Life goes on but it is not ahvays better, it is not always perfect and it is never, ever the same. The film's outlook and content is not as pessimistic as you would think - it is merely real. The real is so hard to come by in cinema that when it makes itself apparent, it cannot be ignored. There are times in your life when you are faced with something so holy and pure, something impervious to detraction no matter what others might say, some- thing that is immediately and irrevocably grafted onto one of those empty places in your heart that you experience a moment of wholeness and true clarity. They're rare. But when they happen, watch out. 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