One has to wonder where exactly the cult-like admiration for “SpongeBob SquarePants,” arguably the most popular production Nickelodeon has ever had, comes from. Is it the endless barrage of pop culture references? Writers who can create witty, indelible lines that remain in millennials’ minds? The unwillingness to stick to any single theme for longer than […]
Author Archives: Sebastian Torrelio
Oscar-nominated documentary shorts offer fresh, humanistic perspectives
The enchanting thing about this year’s – as any year’s – nominations for the Academy Award for best documentary short is how intrinsically humanistic they are. For the most part, these are the stories of people who go about their lives as anyone else would, with happiness, fear and determination, but in ways that separate […]
2015 Oscar Nominations: Live-action short films
Unlike the Academy Award for best picture, which usually prides the biggest achievements in American and English cinema over the last year, the Oscar for best live-action short film is a more international accomplishment. This year’s entries hail from Switzerland and Israel, France and China, and they are as diverse and creative as any crop […]
2015 Oscars Nominations: Short Film (Animated)
BY SEBASTIAN TORRELIOA&E; senior staffstorrelio@media.ucla.edu Every year, the Academy Award nominations for best animated short film can be pared down to a few types: the one with the name brand, the one with the witty premise, the one nostalgically targeted toward children, the one filled with sincere emotion and the one that pushes animation’s technical […]
Movie review: “Girlhood”
“Girlhood”Directed by Céline SciammaStrand Releasing4.0 / 5.0 paws Unlike a certain boy-equivalent film of recent popularity, “Girlhood” doesn’t feel revolutionary or universal. The Parisian ghettos are far more corrupting than the middle-class suburbs of “Boyhood,” but it’s not just the environments that set the two apart: it’s how the films’ susceptible characters thrive in them. […]
Winter TV Preview
In 2015, every network seems to be going off its hinges with the return of highly acclaimed shows still showing their youth, such as “Broad City” premiering Wednesday. With original online shows that now seem like cultural icons, such as “House of Cards,” premiering Feb. 27, and the final seasons of shows that have held […]
Movie Review: ‘Mommy’
Had Xavier Dolan’s “Mommy” won the Cannes Film Festival’s top honor, the Palme d’Or, Dolan would have been the youngest winner in history at 25 years old, surpassing Steven Soderbergh’s accomplished win for “Sex, Lies, and Videotape” by one year. Still, maybe that says something about the Canadian director as a budding artist in the […]