For years, Disney’s animated shorts have always come to the rescue on free nights when I had nothing much to do. Unfortunately there are only so many times that I can rewatch Disney’s collection of animated shorts on Netflix and still tear up to The Little Match Girl or have my heart ache during Paperman (although I still do).
After Spotify’s end-of-the-year wrap-up informed me that I had the tendency of listening to the same songs on repeat, I decided what my grand — for an introvert, at least — 2020 New Year’s resolution would be: to listen to a greater variety of music in settings where I could not be simply wired to a device.
After having only ever seen puppet shows in movies and on TV all my life, I, at the age of 21, finally saw one in person, and it was an utter joy. The show was put on by Baltimore-based troupe String Theory Theater (STT) and guest puppeteer Schroeder Cherry at The Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute and Cultural Center on Saturday, Jan. 26.
The sophomore season of the Netflix psychological thriller You premiered on Dec. 26, transplanting homicidal heartthrob Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) from New York to Los Angeles (LA).
Louisa May Alcott’s story, Little Women, whose volumes were published in 1868 and 1869, remains a truly timeless piece, as seen in the recent release of its seventh film adaptation by director and screenwriter Greta Gerwig this past Christmas. Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women brilliantly showcased the story and has received six Oscar nominations including: Best Picture, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Florence Pugh), Best Original Score (Alexander Desplat), Best Adapted Screenplay (Greta Gerwig), and Best Costume Design (Jacqueline Durran).
We’ve all had that experience: freshman fall, standing against the wall in some musty house and tilting your ear towards your conversation partner as they shout over the music. You make sure to soak in every detail — this could be your new bestie. But WOW they really like movies.
There were a few things about my own personal experience watching 1917 — a movie nominated for 10 Academy Awards this year — that were particularly frustrating. The group of 12-year-old boys in the back of the theater talking and laughing at pretty much full volume throughout the movie was one. The fact that my viewing experience was also interrupted midway by an entirely unnecessary and poorly placed intermission was another.
Let’s be honest: Writing a novel is an intense and mentally draining process. To write an ironically utopian novel is, in itself, a difficult task, but to also perform a public book reading less than a month after it’s been published is no small feat. However, on Jan. 23, Chana Porter did just this as she seamlessly read through the beginning of her novel, The Seep, and subsequently held a live Q&A session with audience members at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse.
Virtual Reality is a five-piece rock band composed of vocalist Parker Treadway, guitarist Ronald Salazar, pianist and guitarist Matthew Ost, drummer Paul Vallejo and newly-recruited bassist Mahesh Pitchayan.
This Thanksgiving break, my stuck-on-campus self and a friend who lives half an hour away hopped on the MARC train at our respective stops to reunite in D.C. for an evening we had planned in August — a concert part of BROCKHAMPTON’s Heaven Belongs to You Tour, which was happening on Monday, Nov. 25.
From a young age, Hopkins junior, Dylan Kwang has immersed himself in the arts. Having taken painting and illustration classes all throughout elementary, middle and high school, art is something that has always been an influence in his life.
Over Thanksgiving break, I had the privilege of visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Unfortunately, their collection of European painting from the years 1200-1800 are mostly not on display due to ongoing renovations. There was, however, a new and different exhibit I had the opportunity to see, and it was absolutely fascinating.
Located in the heart of the National Mall is the Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the two galleries are adjacent and attached to one another, forming a joint museum that focuses on Asian art. Currently on display at the Freer Gallery for the next year is the exhibit “Hokusai: Mad about Painting,” which I went to view over this Thanksgiving break.
I first became familiar with Shirin Neshat during my senior year of high school. Her piece “Rebellious Silence,” a black and white photograph of a woman’s face bisected by a gun barrel and written over with Farsi poetry from her “Women of Allah” series, was a standout work in the Global Contemporary section of the AP Art History exam’s 250 works.
We’ve all grown up with Coldplay. From their saddest songs like “The Scientist” or “Yellow,” to their jubilant hit, “Hymn For the Weekend,” their artistic and instrumental style of music has an almost universal appeal. Not to mention that from their seven studio albums released between 2000 and 2017, they’ve managed to rack up 29 Grammy nominations and six wins.
I’ll just start off this review by saying that there was very little possibility that I was not going to enjoy Knives Out. I’ve been in love with the murder mysteries ever since I stayed up all night reading Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None in sixth grade, so a film based around the key motifs of her style — an eccentric detective, an ornate mansion, a web of lies and an overly-complicated murder plot — was almost certainly going to be a hit in my eyes.
Thanksgiving Day was marked by a rare occurrence this year — a Lil Uzi Vert tweet storm. Addressing his long delayed sophomore album Eternal Atake, Uzi began: “I wanna let My Family know… and I say Family because all the fans left a long time ago. Only Family Stays so if you stayed I’m Thankful for U.”
In the promo video for Seth Meyers’ first stand-up special on Netflix (or anywhere, as far as I can tell), he asks a group of children if they’d like to play with a new action figure, “Stand-Up Seth.”
If you’re like me, vague memories of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass and its cinematic iteration wove themselves intermittently throughout your childhood. Although they were less beloved than Harry Potter, less modern than Percy Jackson & the Olympians and less classic than The Chronicles of Narnia, they are perhaps the most timeless and successfully constructed stories of them all (although the 2007 movie adaptation garnered a fair amount of criticism).
