The Panther Prints

 Rating: 1/5 Panther Paws   When a movie like this comes out, you don’t really know what to expect, do you? It could be a hilarious, silly shark and tornado movie, or, it could just be really, really bad. Sometimes it depends how you look at it. The story is about a guy who owns a bar on a beach in LA, divorced, and everything is going alright until, somehow, wait, is that right? A giant herd of sharks get picked up in a tornado?! There are so many things wrong with that statement.  The guy decides to leave his bar, and drive away with one of his employees and a customer to go find his wife, daughter, and son to save them from the most unrealistic event in the history of existence. It seems as if this movie takes itself too seriously, when there’s a whole cliche emotional scene about whether or not he still cares about his family, or something like that. It really gets boring during those scenes because we came to watch sharks jumping out of tornados...

“We the people.” That was part of the first line of the Constitution. But it’s not really what the writers meant. Because at that time, “We the people,” probably meant, “We the men”. All the writers were men and many of the important people in history were men. Because women weren’t the generals or the politicians they were often ignored by the people of the time and the people of today. When Cokie Roberts wrote Founding Mothers the Women Who Raised Our Nation and then turned it into a picture book for younger people, she attempted to change that.     When I got the chance to interview her, she said that one of the hardest parts of writing Founding Mothers was finding what the important ladies of the time actually said. Lots of them wrote journals and letters, but often times these were burned, sometimes by the women themselves. As President Truman said to his wife when he saw her burning their letters to each other, “Bess, what are you doing; think of h...

SIXTH GRADE DANCE = HUGE SUCCESS! The 6th Grade Dance was wild and a great time for all of the kids who went to it. The music was cranked at full blast, playing songs by Ke$ha, Will.i.am, and L.M.F.A.O with snacks such as red vines, cookies, popcorn, and beverages such as water and lemonade. An anonymous student said, “It was wild and supervised. It was great!” “The photobooth was my favorite part,” said a sixth grader named Alyssa. The same anonymous student also said, “My favorite song was probably ‘Party rock anthem.’” The majority of 6th graders interviewed agreed with him. Although the dance was a huge hit, there have been a few complaints about how loud the music was and that it should have been turned down. Most sixth graders agree, the dance was a huge, wild, and fun success. --Jacob Ben-Shmuel, STAFF WRITER

-- Lisa Adelson

5/5 Panther Paws Today we live in the age of bad animated kids’ movies, but one stands out from all of the talking cars and food falling from the sky (yes, that actually happened). The one I am talking about is The Lego Movie . When I was younger, I spent hours each day putting little colorful plastic bricks together to make deformed houses and flightless space ships. The Lego Movie really clicked with me (no pun intended) for this reason. The story revolves around a normal minifigure named Emmet who lives among a bunch of other people like him, in a big lego city surrounded by giant walls. The opening scene suggests that the people living there think that “everything is awesome!” As the story progresses, though, it becomes evident that something worse is going on. I’m not going to spoil it any more. The animation is all made on a computer, but it is supposed to look like stop motion, with real legos. It was really cool to watch it  because of the realistic feel to the...

Rating: 5/5 Panther Paws When you enter Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or any other social networking site, you are immediately given the ability to share anything with anyone, for better or worse. I recently read a book titled lol...OMG!: What Every Student Needs to Know about Online Reputation Management, Digital Citizenship and Cyberbullying , by Matt Ivester, about social lives and how the internet and its numerous social networks can be dangerous. The book reflects on tragic and true stories of people just like us whose lives were ruined because they didn't think before posting things that anyone could see. There are also cases in which people were cyberbullied unintentionally by their friends, who didn't understand how their actions would be viewed, and there were times when people posted comments and texts saying things they would never say in real life, because they couldn't see the recipient's reaction. At first  this was just going to be a book revie...

This school is full of very talented musicians, many of whom belong to the MVMS band, chorus, or orchestra. These are classes that have grades like English and math, for example , but some people like to play music and not have to worry about having a good report card at the same time. There is a group for those people, the ones who want to play outside of school, and grow their musical skill. This group is called the jazz band, and it is awesome. The jazz band is entirely extracurricular, and it plays--you guessed it-- jazz music. Jazz music is a genre that originated back when slavery was legal. Many slaves would sing songs from their homeland. Over the years, the music morphed into something new, mixing with American styles. This eventually turned into jazz music, becoming very popular. Playing jazz involves lots of improvisation. A jazz song usually begins with a written tune, but then turns to a solo section where one person plays an improvised tune. Leading t...

The 6th Grade Dance was wild and a great time for all of the kids who went to it. The music was cranked at full blast, playing songs by Ke$ha, Will.i.am, and L.M.F.A.O with snacks such as red vines, cookies, popcorn, and beverages such as water and lemonade. An anonymous student said, “It was wild and supervised. It was great!” “The photobooth was my favorite part,” said a sixth grader named Alyssa. The same anonymous student also said, “My favorite song was probably ‘Party rock anthem.’” The majority of 6th graders interviewed agreed with him. Although the dance was a huge hit, there have been a few complaints about how loud the music was and that it should have been turned down. Most sixth graders agree, the dance was a huge, wild, and fun success. --Jacob Ben-Shmuel, STAFF WRITER