Advice for seeing “Gifted” – bring a box of tissues. The film packs a surprisingly honest emotional punch, thanks to the earnest yet nuanced performances of the film’s cast and a refreshing plot that keeps the familiar family drama from feeling stale. Frank (Chris Evans) is a freelance boat repairman in rural Florida, attempting to […]
Category Archives: Film & TV
Movie review: ‘The Fate of the Furious’
The best action sequence of “The Fate of the Furious” isn’t in the trailers. It’s not the scene where self-driving cars go rogue in New York City, nor is it the car chase involving a tank, an orange Lamborghini and a submarine racing across a frozen Russian bay. The best action scene in “The Fate […]
UCLA TFT alumni present social justice-themed short film festival
Five theater, film and television alumni are the moving parts responsible for setting a 25-person film festival into motion. Monica Quinn, Adam Fried, Samantha Bowling, Brandi Feemster and Rafaella Biscayn first met during the School of Theater, Film and Television’s 2015-2016 Professional Program in Acting for the Camera. The group of five 2016 alumni are […]
Grad student leaves engineering career to pursue filmmaking
This post was updated on April 11 at 3:22 p.m. Sining Xiang scored in the top 10 percent of China for his college entrance exams and studied electrical engineering at one of the top universities in China. Xiang then worked as an engineer in Silicon Valley for half a decade – before he decided to become a […]
Second Take: Pepsi ad diminishes efforts, struggles of police brutality protesters
It turns out all you need to end police brutality is to give a cop a can of Pepsi. A three-minute ad for the soda, which was released April 4, features Kendall Jenner abandoning her glamorous photo shoot for a protest outside. She hands a soda to a cop, who shrugs at his fellow officer, […]
Student Hannah Payne makes appearance in ‘13 Reasons Why’ series
Hannah Payne’s phone was off when she got the call that she landed her first-ever recurring role in a television series. The second-year American literature and culture student was at a concert in San Francisco with her family when she missed five calls from her agent’s personal cell phone at 11 p.m. Realizing the repeated […]
UCLA marching band records music for new show ‘Imaginary Mary’
A charter bus with 20 members of the UCLA Bruin Marching Band cruised down Sunset Boulevard and stopped in front of United Recording Studios in October. Brendan James entered the building and admired the platinum records that covered the walls. The records included copies of Green Day’s “American Idiot” and Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” – albums […]