Arts & Culture

Slowthai’s ‘UGLY’ Is Anything But

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On March 3, after a two-year wait, British rapper Slowthai finally released his third studio album UGLY, the successor to 2021’s Tyron. With its raw, introspective content and meshing of hip hop with a punk-focused sound, UGLY checks all the boxes for a hard-hitting, genre-bending record that will undoubtedly and deservedly draw critical acclaim for its ambition and emotionality. By the time Tyron dropped in early 2021, I had only vaguely heard of Slowthai from rumblings that had started from his debut album Nothing Great About Britain. That project was highly regarded right off the bat, so Tyron had a fair amount of hype behind it, which I would say it lived up to. Throughout its runtime, Tyron fairly consistently stays in the mold of a conventional, trap-influenced project, but this element of mainstream conformity doesn’t take away from it being a high-quality album.

Arts & Culture

CHARI | On “Coraline”, Self-Reflection and Our Favorite Childhood Media 

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I got my first tattoo last year. It is a small button, only slightly larger than a quarter. When consulting with the artist, I specified that I wanted a button with four holes in it, like in Coraline. “Oh, you also want one of that movie?” He gestured over to a heavily tattooed man sitting in the front of the shop. “Jake, show her your leg.” Jake (I think his name was Jake, I honestly don’t remember) pulled up his left pant leg to reveal a full color portrait of Coraline’s titular protagonist, complete with blue hair and the top of her yellow raincoat.

Arts & Culture

Nitpicking the Sight and Sound Poll

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Once every ten years, Sight and Sound Magazine polls critics from across the globe in an attempt to construct some semblance of a canon of the greatest films ever made.

Arts & Culture

‘She Said’ Turns the “He Said, She Said” Narrative on Its Head

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How do you handle a story with immense weight? Is it possible to create meaningful change in normalized misconduct? How can you get someone to speak up after they have been silenced? She Said, released on Nov. 18, answered these questions for me as I sat reclined in my hometown movie theater during Thanksgiving break.

Uncategorized

Happily Ever After: A Spotlight on Cog Dog Theatre Troupe

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This show had an interesting start. It was first selected for performance by Cog Dog back in early 2020. I don’t need to elaborate on why that show never came to fruition. So after a two and a half year gap, the show was re-approved for production with almost an entirely different cast and crew. Samantha Sasaki ’23, who first pitched the show as a freshman, got to spend her senior fall working on her directorial debut alongside her co-director, Bianca Santos-Declet ’23.

Arts & Culture

PONTIN | Is Less Really More?

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For me, scrolling through Netflix typically follows something of a pattern. I’ll spend about 20 minutes looking for something new to catch my eye, then make a last ditch effort to understand why people enjoy Gilmore Girls, quickly turn it off and then enter the uncharted waters of the documentaries section. 

Arts & Culture

Staying Together For the Kids: Blink-182 is Back!

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Blink-182 fans rejoice! There’s a phrase not a lot of people born this side of 1990 have ever heard. For those of you who didn’t come of age in the early 2000s, or have a love of pop punk like I do, let me give you a refresher on who I’m talking about. The California-based band was founded in 1992, but they didn’t find commercial success until their album released at the end of the millennium, titled, Enema of the State, which features classics such as “All the Small Things,” “What’s My Age Again” and “ Adam’s Song.” These are all great songs that I highly recommend. 

Lead guitarist/vocalist and band co-founder Tom DeLonge has a habit of leaving and coming back to the band over the years. The last time that he left the band was back in 2015, but within the past few weeks, the band announced in hilarious fashion that DeLonge had rejoined the band and that they would be going on tour together next year.

Arts & Culture

“Our Last Words”: A Love Letter to Upstate NY

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Kaminsky is now a singer-songwriter, as well as a third-year law student at Cornell University. While his eighth-grade band didn’t stand the test of time, he’s released two solo songs since the beginning of his undergraduate career.