A secret service agent stood at the front of the door to the Oval Office, explaining to a group of students that they would only have five minutes to escape the room – or else fail. HBO welcomed students back from spring break with “HBO: The Escape,” an escape room experience that students could sign […]
Category Archives: Film & TV
Students’ commercial places second in Coca-Cola, Regal Films’ contest
Coming soon to a theater near you: a hungry hacker trying to steal your popcorn. Cinematography graduate student Xinzhong “Golden” Zhao directed a 30-second commercial to promote the movie-going experience and became a finalist for Coca-Cola and Regal Films’ commercial contest. In Zhao’s commercial, an on-screen character frantically types on a computer and hears the […]
Q&A: Alumna explores police brutality, race relations in TV show ‘Shots Fired’
After the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown, Fox approached Gina Prince-Bythewood to create a fictional television series about police brutality. Prince-Bythewood felt a responsibility to address the sensitive topic after the black teenager’s death at the hands of a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. The show, “Shots Fired,” is the first television series of […]
Reel Representation: Diversity in ‘Beauty and the Beast’ is less radical than Disney claims
Diversity in film and television came into the spotlight in 2016 with #OscarsSoWhite. A USC study in 2016 found only about a quarter of speaking characters belonged to nonwhite racial groups. In “Reel Representation,” columnist Olivia Mazzucato discusses different issues of race and representation in media as they relate to new movies and TV shows. […]
Movie review: ‘Beauty and the Beast’
Remakes can’t win. Either they aren’t faithful enough to their source material or they are redundant rehashes. Disney’s latest live-action remake, “Beauty and the Beast” brings the tale as old as time to life with special effects and more developed character backstories. Despite the difficult task of remaking the classic fairy tale, “Beauty and the […]
Second Take: The new ‘Beauty and the Beast’ lacks beauty in its beats
Disney is as renowned for its timeless music as for its enchanting animation. Unfortunately, the music of Disney’s reboot of “Beauty and the Beast” verges more toward beastly than beautiful. The 2017 “Beauty and the Beast” soundtrack, featuring covers from contemporary artists including Ariana Grande and Josh Groban and new songs by composer Alan Menken, […]
Q&A: Alumna discusses her experience as original Broadway’s Belle
Susan Egan arrived at the final callback for the character Belle in Disney’s first Broadway musical “Beauty and the Beast” in 1994. The 23-year-old sat in the corner of the room and read “The Mists of Avalon,” a King Arthur story, to keep herself centered and calm among the other young actresses vying for the […]