There has been an almost perverse public obsession with Donald Trump ⸺ 45th president of the United States, convicted criminal and renowned business tycoon. Ali Abbasi’s latest film, The Apprentice, explores the latter of Trump’s identities.
Listening to Machine Girl can sometimes feel like being inserted headfirst into a meat grinder; it’s an unrelenting assault that leaves you strangely exhilarated but also satisfied. Their latest release, MG Ultra, which dropped earlier this month, strays slightly from their usual aesthetics, but still manages to deliver the sonic violence that unmistakably qualifies it as a Machine Girl album.
What if, somehow, scientists discovered a way for us to regain youth? What if suddenly, we had the means to not just feel younger, but actually become a younger version of ourselves again? Should we have this ability? And is there a cost to chasing this societal ideal of the perfect (read: young) woman?
A new take on the love story ended prematurely by illness, We Live in Time gives us a realistic and bittersweet view of what it means to love without regrets. Its genuine interactions and nonlinear plot create a relationship that’s beautiful because of the characters’ efforts toward each other, rather than their tragic premise.
On Oct. 4, Netflix released The Platform 2 which is a Spanish dystopian thriller that reimagines the prison system as a vertical self-management center. A second installment to The Platform universe, the movie begins with two cellmates Zamiatin (Hovik Keuchkerian) and Perempuán (Milena Smit) who wake up on level 24 of the prison.
Hello and welcome! It’s time for another week of new media. Whether you’re on the lookout for inspiration, entertainment or both, the Arts & Entertainment section is here with our list of fresh recommendations.
The rollout for Chromakopia — a series of dystopian, auteurist videos set to abrasive musical snippets — felt like deceptive advertising...There is a disconnect between the album’s industrially-tinged, barren aesthetic framing and its actual lyrical themes. On first listen, I found myself questioning: Why the mask, the military-inspired imagery and the shipping containers?
For their Fall 2024 show, Hopkins’ longest-standing theater company, The Barnstormers, performed one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays, the romantic comedy Twelfth Night. I made sure to attend their first performance on Oct. 24, which had a sparse crowd — likely due to it being on a Thursday — but an energetic atmosphere.
In an interview with The News-Letter, Judah Akers, lead singer of indie folk band Judah & the Lion, says that they make music, “for people… to point people to hope.” Their newest album, The Process, is a journey through the five stages of grief.
On Oct. 13 from 2—4 p.m., four faculty filmmakers from the Film and Media Studies department screened their work... The event highlighted the presenters’ labors of love, with a program that featured the following works: unravelling by Susan Leslie Mann and John Bright Mann, Manger by Jimmy Joe Roche, Turf Valley by Adam Rodgers and Tom Ventimiglia, and I’m Not Your Monster by Karen Yasinsky.
“It’s like standing in a power station on acid,” said Richard D. James, better known as Aphex Twin, of his landmark album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Thirty years later, its beautiful yet unsettling dreamlike soundscapes remain as captivating as ever, and earlier this month the album returned with an expanded anniversary edition.
Whether your Halloweekend just passed, or for some reason you’re celebrating in November (weird choice), there are plenty of new releases and events which will soothe your soul — perhaps enough to reinhabit your body.
Lizzy McAlpine’s most recent release, Older (and Wiser) won me over before I even listened to it. I cannot emphasize how much I love a good — or bad — pun, and deluxe albums with witty titles are my guilty pleasures (see: guts (spilled) by Olivia Rodrigo and Call Me If You Get Lost: The Estate Sale by Tyler, the Creator).
Poet Megan Pinto held an event at local cafe Bird in Hand to present her debut poetry collection, Saints of Little Faith on Sunday, Oct. 6. Alongside Pinto, Samuel Cheney, Jimin Seo and Jess Yuan presented their work. After the attendees had settled into their seats inside of the atmospheric bookstore, the poets were introduced and the event began.
The Hopkins Symphony Orchestra (HSO) delivered an expert performance on the evening of Oct. 5 in the Shriver Hall auditorium. The orchestra opened with William Grant Still’s Serenade before shifting to Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major and ending with Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, or From the New World.
Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo, the Sept. 24 addition to her oeuvre, is a novel chronicling the tumultuous relationship between the Dublin-based 22-year-old competitive chess player Ivan Koubek and his 32-year-old barrister brother Peter after the death of their father. Or, more suitably, Intermezzo is a novel chronicling the men’s relationship with women. What could have been a novel interrogating a variety of worthy themes — the function of grief and trauma in love, the explosive or inopportune nature of fate or the destructiveness of family — is instead a novel that reads like a pubescent teenage boy preoccupied with sex.
You know that moment when a podcast becomes more than just a weekly listen? When it transforms into a cultural phenomenon, sparking debate, drama and endless TikTok commentary? Yeah, that’s what Cancelled , a podcast hosted by Tana Mongeau and Brooke Schofield, has done — taking the world of pop culture, scandals and the art of calling out influencers to a whole new level.
The Peabody Symphony Orchestra (PSO) held its first concert of the 2024–2025 season on Thursday, Oct. 3 at 7:30 p.m. in Miriam A. Friedberg Concert Hall at the Peabody Institute.
“I was always a nerd,” said Jordan Jackson — a Baltimore-based comic artist, writer and faculty for animation at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) — during my First-Year Seminar: Writing with Pictures: An Introduction to Writing Picture Books and Graphic Novels. On Monday, Sept. 30, my class was honored to have Jackson join our class to discuss his journey as an artist and his creative process.
South Korean author Han Kang won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday, Oct. 10 "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.” She is the first Asian woman to win this award.
