Outdoor summer concerts are a big hit in Utah. The warm, dry climate and mountainous backdrop create the perfect atmosphere for open-air entertainment. This makes for a lot of competition and diversity among venues. Thanksgiving Point has much opposition to contend with in this area, but their left hook is a doozy.

From May 24th to June 5th, the UVU Ballroom Team participated in the annual Open British Championship in Blackpool, England. The Open British Championship is analogous to the FIFA World Cup; it’s a crucial event for ballroom dancers all over the world. Every year hundreds of thousands of dancers travel to Blackpool to compete in several dance events.

I haven’t bought many records this year. I’m broke. I live off financial aid, work-study jobs and a part time job at Nicolitalia Pizzeria.

I’m in Park City standing in a line that’s nearly one-third of a mile from the entrance to Deer Valley Resort. I’m in a T-shirt and flip-flops, and I realize that this is pretty poor planning when the rain begins to pour. Before long my friends Jack, Jennie, Errin, Vegor and I are all soaked. The thunder tears in the sky like a giant paper bag shredding and rumbles the ground under our feet. There’s no obvious reason to be standing here.

The entire population of Utah Valley knows that UVU is becoming bigger and better. Every program is trying to grow to fit its new university shoes. The theater department in particular has been working to provide a better education and more experience for its students.

Thanks to a recent grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Orem will join over 200 other cities in celebrating Harper Lee’s classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The program, which includes discussions and presentations, is free even if you don’t live in Orem.

Back in 1998, I was an 18-year-old movie aficionado with a job that paid far too much. I wanted to upgrade from VHS tapes to one of the newer digital formats. There was DVD format, which was fairly costly and there was DIVX (Digital Video Express), a cheaper, CD-based format, but which required one to go online and pay per movie view — like renting. Not knowing which format would catch on, I decided to take a risk by investing in the DVD format. Thank heaven I did. DIVX didn’t last one year.

In the “Best Of” section of the UVU Review’s Aug. 25 issue, we listed upcoming events in the McKay center as Muse, Damien Rice, and Guster. These concerts were in September of 2007.

The new semester has begun, and that means a whole lot of stress and lots of studying, so movies that don’t really require a whole lot of thinking might be a nice release.

The legends surrounding the eccentric writer Hunter S. Thompson appear, at least to some degree, to be accurate.??The new documentary Gonzo, narrated by his muse, Johnny Depp, premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and is currently playing at the Broadway Theater in Salt Lake City. The film sheds new light on Thompson’s life by interviewing a variety of people that personally knew the man.