Culture

CT Recommends: The Menzingers

There aren’t many places in Baltimore where you feel safe, and The Ottobar, Maryland’s premier punk rock bar, certainly isn’t one of them. It’s located in one of the worst neighborhoods in the city, the parking lot is literally a barbed wire cage, the bathrooms are covered in graffiti and piss, and worst of all, […]

Bollywood: then and now

When I refer to Bollywood, many people think of vibrant clothing, cheerful and over-the-top choreography, and drama-filled stories which lean on the edge of sappiness. They certainly wouldn’t be wrong for the most part, but for me these movies were an integral part of how I defined myself in my childhood. Nothing would beat going […]

Arca – ‘Xen’

“Xen” is the major-label debut album from Venezuelan producer Alejandro Ghersi, or “Arca.” As an artist, Arca has collaborated with some pretty high-profile indie acts like FKA Twigs and even Kanye West on last year’s “Yeezus.” On “Xen,” Arca lays down some seriously experimental, patient, and sonically intriguing material. However, “Xen”’s tracks could use more […]

TOOP’s ‘Love in the Garden’: surrealist eroticism

The Opposite Of People (TOOP)’s production of “Love in the Garden,” directed and adapted from its original form by sophomore Alberto Carillo Casas, was performed  from Nov. 6-9 in Drama House. The show was shrouded in reds, yellows, greens, and eroticism, and was surely the product of a whimsical imagination meant to create a world […]

CT RECCOMENDS – Corporate Mixtape

The words “balance, focus, control” repeat like a mantra on Donovan Hikaru and Corp’s track “Outdoor Seminar”, a tune whose sound palette of MIDI slap bass and gated snare drum is as sterile as the corporate rhetoric it samples. That’s the point. Enjoying “Corporate Mixtape” means giving yourself up to its squeaky clean, office-complex vibes. […]

‘Interstellar’: out of this world

“Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” quotes Michael Caine from Dylan Thomas in Christopher Nolan’s new sci-fi epic “Interstellar.” This is a highly ambitious film, full of spectacle and gaze, emotion and tragedy, and mind-bending […]

‘Serial’ podcast examines nature of guilt and justice

“Serial,” the new podcast by the creators of “This American Life,” starts out with one heck of a hook. The narrator, Sarah Koenig, says, “For the last year, I’ve spent every working day trying to figure out where a high school kid was for an hour after school one day in 1999; or if you […]

‘Interstellar’: overrated

It’s often hard for even the casual movie fan to separate the circumstances surrounding a movie from the movie itself. Sometimes, it’s an impossible task. It may seem odd to bring this up in reference to “Interstellar”, a movie that has been generally successful and uncontroversial thus far in its run. Here, however, the circumstances […]

LINK holds benifit concert for Korean refugees

It’s always great to experience the talent of UR’s multiple student-run music and dance ensembles, but it’s an added benefit when you can contribute to a great cause. In this case, each nine-dollar ticket helped to fund efforts by the LINK organization (Liberty In North Korea) to help house Korean refugees currently taking shelter in […]

Student artists speak: Reid Zuckerman

Reid Zuckerman is a sophomore at UR, but he plays guitar beyond his years. Zuckerman’s guitar playing is heavily rooted in “shred” sensibilities – last school year he ripped through a rendition of guitar virtuoso Paul Gilbert’s “Curse of the Castle Dragon,” a song that not only demands technical mastery of the guitar but showmanship […]