Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
We hope you spend much of your break sleeping, but if you do want to get out to the movie theater, we highly recommend “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” Not that we’ve had time to see it yet, but it’s a project from Nick Park and Aardman Animation, the creators of the hilarious “Chicken Run” and the Wallace and Gromit shorts, so we have high hopes. The medium is claymation, a painstakingly slow and old-fashioned technique that Park sets to enchantingly twisted stories about Northern English life. Wallace is a brilliant but daffy inventor, and Gromit is his very capable, silent dog. In this adventure, Wallace and Gromit run a pest-control company which protects their towns’ gardens by humanely disposing of rabbits. But problems, and many puns, ensue.
If you’re going to be staying at Swarthmore and need something to occupy your times, we have a few suggestions. The Philadelphia Orchestra is playing Rachmaninov’s lush Piano Concerto No. 2 with the wonderful French pianist Helene Grimaud on Friday (Brahms’s lyrical Symphony No. 2 is also on the program) and Saturday nights, the Pennsylvania Ballet presents “Swan Lake” at the Academy of Music, and the Greater Philadelphia Rock, Rhythm and Blues Festival is at the World Cafe on Walnut Street. And for the med-school bound or otherwise non-squeamish, the Franklin Institute opens “Body Worlds” today, a show of preserved corpses- minus their skins, many posed in cheeky positions, such as holding their removed skin over their shoulder like a coat. Admission is a hefty $21.50, but only $12.75 after 5:30 p.m.