Fans of the Riot Grrrl movement have been shaking with excitement since the announcement last October that Washington band Sleater-Kinney would be releasing a new album after its eight-year hiatus.The feminist punk trio tore through the '90s and early 2000s with a slew of feisty, politically-charged ...
Porter Square gets little love from the Tufts Medford-Somerville community, but if ever there were a reason to fall for Porter, it would have to be Sapporo Ramen. Nestled in a narrow hole-in-the-wall, Sapporo is located a two-minute walk from the Porter Square T stop. The restaurant's line perennially ...
PBS Masterpiece’s British hit "Downton Abbey" (2010-present) has returned to American televisions for its highly-anticipated fifth season. The show, written and created by Julian Fellowes, follows the lives of the wealthy, aristocratic Crawley family and their servants in the early 20th century.Season five continues ...
Hi everyone! I'm Helen, and welcome to the most literary corner on campus! Each week you'll find me here talking about everything from my most recent favorite books to characters with huge personalities. Let's get started, bookworms!Winter break has come and gone, but if you’re anything ...
Students who study abroad in Spain often return suffering from withdrawal from the country's unique, delicious food. Luckily, there is an option nearby that is almost as good as the real thing. Dalí, a Spanish restaurant in Somerville, is the perfect place for students to go to pretend they're back ...
True art can act as a reminder that, despite conditions of darkness, there is always hope and there is light. “All the Light We Cannot See,” the stunning novel by Anthony Doerr, comments on the nature of blindness and light, both physical and metaphorical.Shortlisted for the 2014 National Book Award, the novel is achingly realistic, but retains a hopeful tone. Throughout the narrative, Doerr places emphasis on instances of good that persist in the face of evil. While this message may be trite or cliché in the hands of a less skilled author, Doerr beautifully portrays the dichotomy between light and dark, pain and faith -- both in nature and in humanity. His writing is delicate but breathtaking, filled with astounding, evocative metaphors, beautiful dialogue and haunting characters.
In the days following the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, in which the magazine’s editor Stephane Charbonnier, four cartoonists, three editorial staff of the magazine, an editor’s bodyguard and a guest at the editorial meeting taking place in the building were killed by terrorists (two policemen were killed by the gunmen as the three suspects fled the scene), artists created an outpouring of support through the only means that seem to fully encompass all emotions during this turbulent and uncertain time -- art. Banksy posted a cartoon to Instagram in response, simply captioned “RIP”; Chilean political cartoonist Francisco J. Olea created an image of a makeshift gun made out of art supplies and titled it, “¡A Tomar Las Armas Compañeros!” (Translated it reads: “To arms, companions!”) Other artists across the globe followed in this vein, playing off of the idea that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” by transforming pens into guns, or having battles between artists and gunmen depicted in their art pieces. French President Francois Hollande went on television to say, “Our best weapon is our unity.”
On Jan. 12, Marvel released the second trailer for “Avengers: Age of Ultron.” The first trailer premiered in October, showcasing the movie’s villain Ultron (voiced by James Spader) with an eerie cover of the song “I’ve Got No Strings” from the classic Disney movie “Pinocchio” (1940) playing in the background. A similarly disturbing acoustic version of the song plays during the newest trailer as well. This clip is a brief one minute and forty seconds, but is packed with new information about the film's plot.
The average audience member may not expect much of the medley of elements that make up Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike"(premiered Off Broadway in 2012), now playing at the Huntington Theatre. In the span of the performance, the audience encounters an aging movie ...
Junior Will Freeman is about to embark on his semester abroad in Uruguay, but not before gracing listeners with a chilling new EP, entitled “Dispatches from the Snowglobe Heart.” Freeman, a political science major, is a familiar face in the Tufts underground music scene as the bassist/vocalist ...
The Decemberists have never settled for simple. Instead, they’ve released album after album of far-reaching, grand concepts: progg-y rock opera on “The Hazards of Love” (2009), pastoral Americana on “The King is Dead” (2011). All were mythical, theatrical and meticulously crafted.In “What ...
As the semester begins, the Arts section of the Daily is already suffering from the loss of a very special person. Veronica Little, student artist and comedian and the former designated Top Ten writer, is sadly gone. No, she’s not dead – she’s just not writing for us right now – but we still ...
Located across the street from the Huntington Theater, the plain, windowed exterior of Pho & I blends in among the rest of the restaurants lining the block. The menu, on the other hand, which offers a mishmash of Thai and Vietnamese dishes, manages to stand out. Occasionally straying from traditional ...
Something is rotten in the city of Pawnee, Ind. and surprisingly, it’s not the snooty residents of the former Eagleton. NBC’s "Parks and Recreation" (2009 - present) returned on Jan. 13 with back-to-back episodes, kicking off its short final season with an unforeseen feud between the ever-ambitious ...
Harsh and unrelenting, an aggressive drum beat opens the first track on Viet Cong’s self-titled debut album. The song “Newspaper Spoons” sounds more like a battle cry than a welcome to the band’s music, yet its intensity does not allow the track to become cookie-cutter metal or pop-punk. Two minutes into the song, which clocks in at three minutes 21 seconds,layers of tinkling keyboard melodies come in and add an extra dimension to the piece. While the grinding gritty rock feel is established, so too is the assertion that the members of Viet Cong know exactly what they're doing. They are, in three minutes and twenty-one seconds, established as rebels in an already rebellious sub-genre of music.
When Guster formed in 1992, soon after its members met at Tufts Wilderness Orientation, the band did not even have a real rock drummer. Founded by Tufts alumni Adam Gardner (LA ’95), Ryan Miller (LA ’95) and Brain Rosenworcel (LA ’95), the group cultivated a unique style based around Rosenworcel’s motley drum kit of congas and cymbals. Although this sound has dissipated since the band fell into the mainstream spotlight with “Lost and Gone Forever” (1999), many of its popular albums continued to incorporate unconventional percussive and melodic elements. However, with the release of its previous album “Easy Wonderful” (2010) and now 2015's “Evermotion," Guster has shed its early raw shell.
Singing knights and silly humor are coming to a TV screen near you. ABC premiered its new comedy, "Galavant," a four-week long comedic musical series, on Jan. 4.The show features music by composer Alan Menken, who composed scores for numerous Disney films, including “The Little Mermaid” (1989), “Beauty and the Beast” (1991) and “Aladdin” (1992)."Galavant" focuses on a typical heroic knight named Galavant (Joshua Sasse), a conventionally handsome, scruffy hero.Early in the first episode, the titular protagonist is spurned by his girlfriend Madalena (Mallory Jansen) in favor of the hilarious tyrant King Richard (Timothy Omundson), and so he must embark on a quest to regain his honor and his love.
“Club Meds” is a busy and chaotic blend of synth and noise that creates a joyride of musical exploration and adventure for listeners. With his fourth studio album, Dan Mangan is not afraid to smear together sounds of old and new, compiling pieces from synth samples and heavily melodic vocals. “Club Meds” is a wild, dizzying and fearless exploration into the new musical world, where the 21st century's popular diversity of sounds must rely on old school musicality to succeed -- and succeed “Club Meds” does.
For a movie that takes on a larger-than-life man in the midst one of the most triumphant acts of his career as its subject matter -- namely, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. -- “Selma” finds its greatest highlights in the quiet and subdued moments of its 127-minute run. With a critical eye and a hyper-awareness of mise-en-scene and characterization, director Ava DuVernay makes good use of her powerhouse cast -- which includes David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Wilkinson and Cuba Gooding Jr. to name a few -- while making intense dialogue the focus of the picture. Rather than falling into the trap of excessive grandeur and over-the-top, triumphant cheesiness, DuVernay’s “Selma” more closely mimics “Milk” (2008) and “Lincoln” (2012) with its balance of quiet and chaos. It tackles historical subject matter through a narrow and carefully positioned lens.
If it were possible to write an article composed solely of excited squealing, this review would be a page of high-decibel happiness. "Marvel’s Agent Carter,” which premiered on ABC on Jan. 6, is the latest expansion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and gives viewers a taste of how refreshing a female-led superhero story can be. The seven-week series stars Hayley Atwell as Agent Peggy Carter, a character introduced as Steve Rogers’ love interest in “Captain America: The First Avenger”(2011). However, Atwell and her character have proved in “Agent Carter,” and in a 2013 Marvel “One Shot” short film of the same name, that Peggy Carter is no simple ingenue, but a hero in her own right.
