6A
---
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2005
DESIGN
Class designs fishing tools to lure anglers
Kellv Hutsell/KANSAN
Zach Koenig, Plymouth, Minn., senior, jokes around during a break in his "Industrial Design IV" studio class. The class has been making designs for new fishing devices, some of which hang on the walls in front of Koenig. Students will present their designs at the beginning of April.
BY NEEL MULKA
nmulka@kansan.com
KANSAN STAFF WRITER
Industrial design students have a challenge: Create a fishing product to attract young people to the sport that costs less than $20 to buy.
For some of the students, there's another problem: They're vegetarian.
"It's kind of strange thinking up different ways to kill living things." Ben Thompson, Ottawa senator, said.
Moral dilemmas aside, Thompson and Sean McCue, Roeland Park senior and a vegetarian, worked on creating a product aimed at the youth market for Zebco, a Claremore, Okla., fishing gear company for his "Industrial Design IV" studio class.
Instead of focusing his product on catching fish. McCue made a product to help anglers cast best and would be a game for children.
The user throws the target out and tries to catch them with the fishing rod. This practice helps the angler's aim and casting technique. McCue said.
McCue plans on making the targets biodegradable in case they float too far away to be retrieved.
"Fishermen are wanting to preserve this kind of hobby." McCue said. The targets won't harm the lake, McCue said.
Thompson created a bobber — a plastic float attached to the fishing line to keep bait at a certain depth — that keeps the hook next to the bobber until it hits water.
This prevents the hook from being caught in the angler's skin or clothes when casting, Thompson said.
Before designing, students split into research groups to
study Zebco's competition, why or why not people fish and fishing technology.
This research helped the students get a better grasp of the sport because most of the students haven't fished for a long time, said David Starr, adjunct professor of industrial design.
Bryce Ludwig, Olathe senior is developing a reel with a digital screen that shows how much line the user casts and other statistics, aimed at keeping children 12 to 16 years old from being bored while fishing.
The reel will give the fisher something to do while waiting for a fish to bite. Ludwig said.
Students are developing their designs from a variety of methods including sketches, three-dimensional rendering software and clav models.
Students will present their prototypes to Zebco representatives April 11.
The assignment gives Zebco an untainted look at fishing from a younger generation, said Marde Burke, manager of industrial design for Zebco.
Three of the designs will be selected to get an interview for a summer internship with Zebco, and a fishing trip to Lake Texoma in Oklahoma, Burke said.
Thompson said he would pass on the fishing trip.
"I would ask for the cash equivalent," the vegetarian said. "Maybe I could sell it on eBay."
— Edited by Jesse Truesdale
MOVIE REVIEW
'Ring Two' lacks suspense
BY STEPHEN SHUPE
sshupe@hansan.com
JAPAY MOVIE REVIEWER
The Japanese horror craze continues with director Hideo Nakata's sequel to 2002's terrifying "The Ring."
THE RING TWO
That film, based on Nakata's Japanese horror blockbuster "Ringu," spawned a series of Hollywood remakes that includes 2004's "The Grudge." Despite a promising beginning and a crowd-pleasing finale, "The Ring Two" is the least satisfying of the series so far.
Too bad then, that the film's suspense evaporates so quickly. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger, who also wrote the first "Ring," doesn't play off our anticipatory fears the way he did before. There's no death-wish count-down to the seventh day in "The Ring Two," and the film draps between the horror scenes.
In the interim, big-city reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) has packed up her young son Aidan (David Dorfman) and moved to a seaside town in
In the film's opening, which begins in Lawrence today at South Wind 12 Theatres, 3433 Iowa St., two lascivious teens named Jake (Ryan Merriman) and Emily (Emily VanCamp) settle down to watch a video. Yes, that video — the one that kills you seven days after you watch it. Nakata picks up where the original film left off, where even the simple sound of a telephone ring adds new layers of dread.
Stars: ☆☆ (out of four)
Rating: PG-13
Run time: 109 minutes
Venue: South Wind 12
Director: Hideo Nakata
Oregon, Samara (Kelly Stables), the evil ghost behind the deadly videotape, still haunts Aidan's dreams. She's looking for a new mother, her previous guardian having sealed her in a deep well before plummeting from a cliff.
The King虹60 images on a familiar horror trope: demonic possession. Samara possesses Aidan in the hope of replacing him as Rachel's child. This means much of the film rests on Dorfman's slender shoulders. Nakata makes clever use of Dorfman's expressive eyes to reveal Samara's point of view, and the actor's creaky falsetto voice reminded me of Danny Lloyd screaming "Red rum! Red rum!" in Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining."
Nakata and Kruger allude to the Andrea Yates case. Much like the mentally ill Texas mother who submerged her five children in a bathtub, Rachel suffered from postpartum depression after giving birth to Aidan.
The filmmakers rely heavily on details from the original film, and this modest sequel is best
viewed as a double feature with "The Ring."
Nakata has risked confounding his audience by refusing to reiterate the rules set up in the first film. If you've forgotten about Samara's knack for freaking out animals, a key sequence involving a heard of charging deer will come across as silly and utterly bizarre.
Confusion and boredom gives us ample time to pick through holes in the plot. The original "Ring" may have failed to cohere completely, but we were too busy cowering in terror to notice. "The Ring Two" isn't nearly as scary, so we're left wondering why Samara can't hear Rachel and Aidan in their dreams.
Nakata excels at flourishes of versatile horror, especially in the scene where Samara performs a suspenseful crab walk up a wall. But most of the film involves lukewarm scactics, such as water seeping under doors. Like many Japanese filmmakers, Nakata latches onto symbolic imagery, and his style often rubs up against the conventions of mainstream American horror.
After "We Don't Live Here Anymore" and "I Heart Huckabees," "The Ring Two" is a rare misstep for Watts. Her voice barely rises above a whisper before the film's surprisingly satisfying conclusion, which doesn't leave the door open for a sequel in the same way the original did.
PAGE
L f I
---