Rodgers and Hammerstein? It can’t have been a coincidence. A casual and fun performance the same weekend that admitted students came streaming in? Well played, Amherst Symphony Orchestra, well played.
Just as well played was the actual music, which lived up to Amherst’s usual standards of excellence in “The Sound of Their Music: A Tribute to Rodgers & Hammerstein.” It was a performance that combined the vocal prowess of seven students with an excellent accompaniment provided by the Amherst orchestra.
Fifteen years ago, James Cameron turned a tragic maritime disaster into a romantic disaster epic cum box-office-shattering pop-culture phenomenon. “Titanic” was the first film ever to gross over a billion dollars worldwide and scooped up 11 Oscars. It confirmed Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet as rising A-list stars and even made Billy Zane briefly relevant, a feat that I think might be even more impressive than the film’s revolutionary special effects.
Currently on hiatus during its third season, “Modern Family” is a sitcom on ABC about the lives of three vastly different immediate families within one larger extended family. Jay Pritchett (Ed O’Neill) is the eldest member of the family and is married to an attractive Colombian woman named Gloria (Sofia Vergara) who embodies the epitome of a Latin trophy wife.
Over the past two decades, video games have ascended from being a subculture to becoming one of the biggest entertainment industries of our generation. Many of us enjoy AAA titles, such as Call of Duty, Super Mario Bros. or Grand Theft Auto. In the past few years, however, the industry has witnessed an explosion of small developers producing indie games, exploring innovative new game concepts and offering these hand-crafted experiments at low prices.
Let’s face it. Even without knowing anything about “The Vagina Monologues,” the fact that it is about vaginas is enough to know that we are dealing with some heavy topics here. It seems like the concept of femininity, of womanhood, is incomplete without a conversation about sex. And when we say sex, we mean sex as power, as rape and abuse, as tangible proof that women are still being treated unfairly.
If you’ve frequented the Internet in the last few weeks, particularly the usual suspects of Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, then chances are you not only know about “The Hunger Games” movie hype but also the related racial controversy. For those of you still in the dark: the adaptation of the first book in Suzanne Collins’ wildly popular series hit theaters March 23. The futuristic film, superficially about “kids killing kids,” has drawn attention for its commercial success, political message and faithfulness to the book.
Writing on a film that makes more money in its opening weekend than the combined domestic box office of all the films I have reviewed for The Student in over a year is quite a departure for me in many ways. For one, instead of having an entire theater to myself (or so I used to pretend), I had to swim in a sea of fresh, glowing teenagers whose popcorn crunching rivaled their pre-show chatter.
