Enjoy Hospital–Based Films with Social Commentary at Penn's Bioethics Film Festival
“Free food, free movies, free ideas,”—that's how Ethics professor Jonathan Moreno aptly describes the upcoming Penn Bioethics Film Festival.
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“Free food, free movies, free ideas,”—that's how Ethics professor Jonathan Moreno aptly describes the upcoming Penn Bioethics Film Festival.
RFA, a band of hometown friends recently named one of the 10 Artists You Should Know from Philadelphia by NPR, is a lot of things. When I ask a simple question—"who is the band?"—a veritable smorgasbord of answers, varying in seriousness and pretension, were thrown at me.
Nine years after aliens first land on Earth, all governments have been taken over by spiky alien “legislators” (as they call themselves), and all human life is under constant surveillance in the form of neck–implanted, trackable bugs. Captive State, released March 15, follows several main characters in one long, highly confusing espionage plot. Rebelling against the alien takeover are Rafe Drummond (Jonathan Majors) and a gaggle of nameless faces, and supporting the aliens is William Mulligan (John Goodman). Caught in between is Rafe’s brother, Gabriel (Ashton Sanders).
Marvel’s first female superhero origin story is finally here: Brie Larson stars as extraterrestrial Kree warrior fighting a war between her people and the evil, shape shifting Skrull people. All the while, she struggles with keeping her emotions in check at the direction of her Kree comander, Yon–Rogg (Jude Law), and working through recurring snippets of her past life that she can’t quite piece together. After a mission goes bad, she finds herself on Earth in 1995, where she meets future SHIELD director, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and enlists his help to end the war with the Skrulls. She eventually uncovers her true identity as U.S. air force pilot Carol Danvers and realizes her true power to become Captain Marvel.
Netflix is more than just a streaming service. Conceived initially as a DVD rental business, the company has grown far past its initial model and is now best known for producing and streaming its own original series and movies. The business model raises questions around the nature of film production, movie theaters, and how we view the medium as a whole. Steven Spielberg thinks that Netflix’s artistry is nonsense.
Covers are universal—since the dawn of music records, artists have recorded and rerecorded over others’ work, adding their own twists to create something new. From “I Can’t Stop Lovin’ You” by Ray Charles, to “Killing Me Softly” by The Fugees, to “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston, these reinventions have occasionally popped up on the charts over the years. But why do artists feel a need to make covers? What is the value of making one when the song already exists?
Horror has always been treated as somewhat of a lesser genre. '90s and 2000’s horror, for example, is famously formulaic. At best, horror movies seemed like a way for the stars of teenybopper television to prove they could "act" with a capital A, and for studios to make a quick buck unfettered by the laws of good or logical cinema. Simply put, they epitomized the term “B–movie”.
Comedian Ricky Gervais has always been a controversial figure. His typical brand of humor is mocking, and can come across as insulting. In hosting the Golden Globes on four separate occasions, he consistently received hotly mixed reviews, seeing as his performance was largely based on the ridicule of many of the celebrities in the audience. However, his routines can also be sharp and hilariously relatable rather than mean—sometimes. Unfortunately, his newest Netflix Original After Life, released on March 8, crystallizes his resentful attitude, but without any of his redeeming wit.
In the morning of Friday, Feb. 22, Claire Sliney (C ’21), a former beat reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian, went to class until 11 a.m. By 1 p.m., she was headed to the airport for a 3:55 p.m. direct flight home to Los Angeles. But this wasn’t an ordinary visit.
Survival movies: you get it. Man vs. wild, life vs. death. Setting? Somewhere excessively cold/wet/hot. Arctic is a survival movie with all the typical elements, but the execution of it all pushes it beyond the rest.
Well–acted, thoughtfully constructed, and odd in all the right ways, Netflix’s Maniac was an elegant return to form when it came to the streaming service’s ever–growing body of original content. Rich world–building and tongue–in–cheek dark humor made this 2018 series a bingeable one, while its relevant underlying themes of alienation in contemporary life ultimately made it a meaningful watch. Maniac is centered around two very different individuals, Annie (Emma Stone) and Owen (Jonah Hill), who each experience mental health issues and monetary concerns that, by one way or another, land them in an otherworldly experimental drug trial. After undergoing a series of hallucinogenic therapies, which, due to a glitch, end up overlapping Owen and Annie’s experiences, the two find ways of facing the underlying trauma at the root of their suffering, forming a bond of friendship along the way. Ultimately, Maniac is concerned with the capacity for connection to heal us, and conveys this message through an exceptionally well–made limited series.
Black screen. Triumphant music. Title crawl. Star Wars, it reads, Episode IX. The newest trilogy by LucasFilm is at the beginning of the end.
Avril Lavigne has been around for a while—international hits such as “Complicated” and “Girlfriend” came over a decade ago, and the singer was dubbed the “Pop Punk Queen” for her music and fashion style as she dominated the charts. Until Head Above Water came out on Feb. 15, Lavigne hadn’t released a record since her self–titled album in 2013, an up–tempo, pop–rock collection that was relatively well–received but criticized by some for overusing rebellious tropes. Head Above Water comes a few years after the singer’s diagnosis with Lyme disease, which inspired the album that she described on Twitter as "an emotional journey.” But does the album actually manage to reach that standard and serve as a proper comeback for the now 34–year–old? The answer is a hard, unequivocal no.
The road to the 91st Academy Awards has been a particularly rocky one. This season’s other award shows—the BAFTAs, the SAGs, and even the famously liquor–fueled Golden Globes—went off without a hitch. But the Academy Awards can’t seem to catch a break. In the past few months, the Academy’s every move has faced major backlash, resulting in the Oscars' first host–less show in 30 years, constant retractions, and worst of all, frequent reference to Kevin Hart. And when Kevin Hart’s name becomes an integral part of popular culture, one can’t help but feel a sense of impending doom.
In her senior year of high school, a time when most of us were only beginning to dream up what possibilities the future would hold, Claire Sliney (C ‘21), a former beat reporter for The Daily Pennsylvanian, was in the midst of a project that would eventually land her a win at the 91st Academy Awards.
Based on the 1939 classic film The Wizard of Oz, Broadway's 2003 premiere of Wicked—a revisionist tale exploring the origin stories of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, the Good Witch of the South—took the world by storm. The musical has claimed an enviable spot as the second highest grossing Broadway show of all time. Now, the beloved and wildly popular musical is finally getting the cinematic makeover it deserves. Universal Pictures recently announced its official release date for the Wicked movie adaptation as Dec. 22, 2021, and let’s just say fans are (understandably) excited.
sFor the past decade, the age–old question that haunts blockbuster moviegoers is, “Marvel or DC?" The entertainment companies have been in staunch competition since they were both founded in the 1930s, but wasn’t until the mid–2000s that comics had a revival through the ever–changing film industry. With this, however, the artistry and creativity of the comics themselves were lost in translation. The superhero film, now solidified as a genre, has deteriorated its source material.
Hip–hop pervades every city in America—it developed in urban environments and remains a strong musical influence there even as it has taken center stage in popular music within the last few decades. Los Angeles has brought us N.W.A. and Kendrick Lamar, Jay–Z and The Notorious B.I.G. came from New York, and Atlanta provided Outkast and T.I., among others. Similarly, Philadelphia has nurtured numerous hip–hop artists who have carved out their place in the upper echelon of the genre. But who among these individuals are the best to come from Philly? Here are the top five rappers repping the City of Brotherly Love:
Adapting a film from an already–established bank of source material can be either a blessing or a curse. In Alita: Battle Angel’s case, it’s the latter. Alita tells the story of Alita (Rosa Salazar), a warrior cyborg found nearly demolished in a scrapyard and brought back to life by Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz). As Alita explores her new home in Iron City, she searches for answers to her forgotten past and falls in love with Hugo (Keean Johnson), a human boy.
It’s time for an African–American film to win the Oscar for Best Picture. The universally coveted award has been facing serious backlash in recent years for its homogeneity, as #OscarsSoWhite so succinctly puts it. Two extraordinarily powerful African–American films have made it to the nominations shortlist this year. BlacKkKlansman and Black Panther sent out shockwaves throughout the country upon their releases. The two are both groundbreaking films, but here’s why BlacKkKlansman should get the Oscar over Black Panther.
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