There’s no better place to keep a finger on the pulse of arts and entertainment happenings than Los Angeles. The A&E world is alive – it’s always buzzing, sometimes ready to implode with a hint of a surprise album or a celebrity’s controversial statement. Each week, the Daily Bruin A&E editors will discuss their views […]
Category Archives: Film & TV
One-take, unscripted German film ‘Victoria’ screened at UCLA theater
Strobe lights pulse hypnotically as the camera pans to Victoria swaying on the dance floor. Only the pumping bass breaks the silence, beating like her heart as she gathers her long hair and tosses it over her head. The camera follows her out into the bar to down a shot of schnapps and then up […]
Movie Review: ‘Bridge of Spies’
A wrinkled old man sits on a park bench in Brooklyn, painting the bridge he faces across the water. After a few deft strokes of his brush, he leans forward and pries a quarter stuck on the underside of the bench. When he returns to his shabby hotel room, the man takes a razor blade, […]
Lights, Camera, Political Action: ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington’
Flip on a news channel and you’re likely to see characters with perfectly coiffed hair making fantastical claims directly at the camera. But how far does this connection between political figures and entertainment go? Each week, A&E Columnist Kevin Truong will look at a movie through the lens of modern politics, analyzing whether the political […]
Movie Review: ‘He Named Me Malala’
Generally speaking, documentary plot lines are hard to spoil, but definitely not impossible to. Great documentaries provide insight into the overlooked details of a subject, interwoven into a storyline that fits seamlessly with the cinematic format. “He Named Me Malala” has none of these things. The only one it somewhat appears to have is a […]
Movie Review: ‘The Martian’
There are four people primarily responsible for what the cinematic version of Andy Weir’s bestselling novel “The Martian” ended up being: Weir, obviously; director Ridley Scott, coming off a streak of overwrought audience displeasures; screenwriter Drew Goddard, known for throwing absurdity into his stories; and Matt Damon, known for wandering into onscreen absurdity. Sure, the […]
Reels, Notes and Takes: Week 1
There’s no better place to keep a finger on the pulse of arts and entertainment happenings than Los Angeles. The A&E world is alive – it’s always buzzing, sometimes ready to implode with a hint of a surprise album or a celebrity’s controversial statement. Each week, the Daily Bruin A&E editors will discuss their views […]