The University recently announced that Spike Lee will be the commencement speaker this May. While many members of the Hopkins community may have heard of the Academy Award nominated director or even seen one of his films, there are many who are not familiar with his life, his work and the impact he has had on the film industry and issues of social justice.
Last Friday, eccentric rapper Father released his latest album, I’m A Piece of Sh*t. Father releases music via his collective label Awful Records that features artists similar to himself.
On Sunday, March 27, Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse hosted the annual Baltimore Citywide Youth Poetry Team Grand Slam along with Dew More Baltimore, an organization that strives to increase community engagement in the Baltimore area through youth programming, art and community organizing. The organization currently has programs in 46 schools in the Baltimore area.
On Thursday, March 23, the Program for the Study of Women, Gender and Sexuality at Hopkins hosted director Malaika Aminata for a screening and discussion of her 2015 documentary Not About a Riot. The film follows the events of the Baltimore Uprising, specifically between April 23 and May 1. The movie was shot by Aminata, a Morgan State University graduate and Baltimore resident, and was developed and produced independently by the director and others. As the title implies, the documentary avoids any depictions of the violence that occurred during this time period. Instead, Aminata’s film directs its attention to peaceful demonstrations, non-violent protests, impromptu concerts and artistic gatherings. Music features prominently in the film, especially in an extended scene dedicated to a small rap show set in front of a row house.
Making his first visit to Hopkins since 1999, cartoonist Ben Katchor will give an illustrated lecture entitled “Hand-Drying in America and Other Stories: Picture-recitations from 18 years of comic-strips about architecture and urban design from Metropolis Magazine” on April 4.
10 Cloverfield Lane is the second film in the Cloverfield anthology franchise helmed by J.J. Abrams (Star Trek, Lost). This is the feature film debut of director Dan Trachtenberg who previously directed a short film for the popular PC game Portal. The film stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead (The Thing, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World), John Goodman (Inside Llewyn Davis, The Big Lebowski) and John Gallagher, Jr. (The Newsroom, Short Term 12).
As students pass through Q-level of MSE Library they may have noticed the array of sounds emanating from a small silver speaker attached to the wall. These sounds, which range from energetic music to the buzzing of the natural world, are part of an exhibit titled You Are Hear, which will continue until March 31.
“Netflix and chill,” “Amazon Prime and commitment” and “Hulu and hang” are some of the most common pick-up lines of the modern college community, epitomizing the shift from network television series to online streaming services.
March 31 will mark the beginning of the 20th annual Johns Hopkins Film Festival. The festival is curated by the Hopkins Film Society (HFS) and will feature three screenings of feature films and a collection of independent exhibitions.
WILL SCERBO, musician and music director of WJHU
Downton Abbey, the critically acclaimed and internationally popular British drama series, came to an end this past Sunday after six seasons in an uplifting two-hour series finale. In a show marked by tragedy, the finale gave viewers a chance to see every character get the happy ending he or she had long been striving for.
As a part of women’s history month, the Digital Media Center (DMC) held a talk on the role of women in the video game community on Feb. 5. The talk was titled “Pretty Dolls or Rational Actors?” and was given by Bridget M. Blodgett, an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore in the Simulation and Digital Entertainment program.
Kendrick Lamar has been in the public eye for the past five years and has undergone a meteoric rise in popularity in the last three. In his breakout studio album good kid, m.A.A.d city, Lamar paid his respects to multiple west coast icons including Dr. Dre. Years later, Lamar holds notoriety that rivals that of Dre’s considerable clout in the rap industry.
The English Club hosted an Ides of March party in the Tudor & Stuart Room in Gilman on March 9. The event, which commemorated the day that Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C.E., included elements of both Roman and Shakespearean literature, with allusions to the play written by the Bard in the 16th century. The event appealed to students of all majors and varying degrees of knowledge about Caesar and Shakespeare.
Baltimore’s Charles Theatre is currently showing the Hungarian film Son of Saul in the wake of the film’s Oscar victory in the category of “Best Foreign Language Film.” The movie, which is director László Nemes’ feature film debut, follows a Hungarian-Jewish man, Saul Ausländer, as he navigates the living hell of Auschwitz.
The JHU Pride and The Arts, Entertainment, Media and Entrepreneurship Affinity Group (AEMA Affinity) presented a showing of the documentary We Do: After Marriage Equality on March 3. The JHU Pride is a group that works to create a community for Hopkins’ LGTBQ alumni and the AEMA Affinity for alumni to connect with one another and discover new resources and information through their former classmates.
The movie was directed by Rick Famuyiwa and tells the story of three Inglewood teenagers who, in their battle against adversity fought from the depths of social exile, get involved with some drugs — not in the after-school special sense, just in the sense that it’s an issue. The cast is headlined by Shameik Moore as Malcolm, a geek with a passion for the ‘90s. He is flanked by Tony Revolori and Kiersey Clemons as Jib and Diggy, his best friends as well as fellow neon and flattop fetishists. The three are picked on for doing what Malcolm calls “white things,” like skating, studying and having a punk band. They also all have ridiculous amounts of fashion sense: crop tops, denim and primary colors have never looked so good.
