Arts

As January draws to a close, the buzz about who will take home the Oscars this year increases.

Five must see movies to see this semester:

John K. Samson’s sophomore full-length Provincial perfectly suits this mild winter: soft yet up-beat, somber but hopeful—bright notes stick out in these melodies like blades of grass in melting snow (please refrain from envisioning brown grass for the sake of your figurative viewing pleasure). 

If you haven’t seen Die Hard by now you should say three Hail Marys and then rush to Netflix.  It’s simply inexcusable. It’s one of those movies that forces you to describe other movies as being “Die Hard on a boat” or “Die Hard on a plane.” 

Directed by John McTiernan, it combines everything you’ve ever liked about an action film into 133 minutes of edge-of-your-seat thrills. If you like the action genre even a little bit then Die Hard is definitely a classic, and maybe even your favorite movie.

Bruce Willis plays John McClane, an NYPD police officer traveling to Los Angeles to stay with his two little girls for Christmas Eve and hopefully patch up a rough spot in his marriage with his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia). McClane is too dedicated a cop to leave his city behind and start a new life with Holly after her major promotion sends her to L.A., but he makes the trip anyway to surprise her at her office, which is on the thirtieth floor of a massive state-of-the-art sky scraper.  Unfortunately, he is not the only surprise, and, while washing up in the bathroom, he misses a group of machine-gun-toting German terrorists take everybody, including his wife, hostage. The shoeless hero takes to the air vents with a gun and his bad boy New York attitude to pick off the Fabio-looking thieves one by one while he attempts to crack the mystery behind the takeover.

While the terrorists, led by Hans (Alan Rickman), try to break the computer codes to get into a vault holding six million dollars in bonds, McClane is able to get his hands on a radio transmitter and contact the outside world and, more importantly, desk-cop Al, played by Reginald Veljohnson. Unfortunately, the terrorists also have radio transmitters.  This opens up a confession-like dialogue between hero McClane, head terrorist Hans, and former cop-in-the-field Al. This radio correspondence gives the viewer a sense of McClane’s humanity and vulnerability, but it also gives insight into Al’s crippling past–and most importantly Hans’ rapidly weakening plan. The fun is heightened because none of the characters know what the good guy or the bad guy looks like.

People who see Die Hard for the first time now will say the same things: “Those were high-tech computers!?” “Look at the old-fashioned hair styles,” and “Isn’t that Snape?” Once you get used to the vintage  90s look and the fact that the good cop is Winslow from Family Matters, you’ll settle down and strap yourself in for the ride.  Yes, the catchphrases might be a little cheesy, but they make each quick kill more fun and enjoyable. Plus, everything you want to happen will always happen. Machine guns rarely run out of ammo, the hero is always giving away his location and confronting terrorists, things go boom, tanks explode and people jump off skyscrapers tied to makeshift fire hose bungee cords. 

Die Hard is an essential action film, unlike the sequels that follow (Die Hard 2, Die Hard With a Vengeance, and Live Free or Die Hard). There are some anti-climactic cut-aways, but for the most part the movie packs punch after satisfying punch. If you call yourself a fan of the action genre then you have to see this movie. There are plenty of die-hard Die Hard fans out there who love watching it over and over again, quoting every line.

DJ Earworm has done it again! For those of you who don’t know who DJ Earworm is, allow me to inform you.

America’s been inundated recently with the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millenium” crime series.

Marie Antoinette probably never said “Let them eat cake,” since the infamous jest, which is actually taken from Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, was published when the disgraced Queen of France and Navarre was the nine-year-old Archduchess of Austria.

This January thriller doesn’t aim for the stars and neither did Baltasar Kormakur, director of Contraband.

This January thriller doesn’t aim for the stars and neither did Baltasar Kormakur, director of Contraband.

The Muppets is certainly one of the pleasantest films I have seen in a long while.

The Muppets are like pizza: When they’re good, they’re amazing, and when they’re bad, they’re still pretty good.

Sometime last year, Jason Segel announced on a late-night chat show he had written a new Muppet movie.

Michelle Williams is a goddess.

Yes, this album simply covers landmark Christmas songs.

Charles Dickens’ timeless novella A Christmas Carol, a landmark of the holiday season since 1843, is among his many immortal writings (including Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities) to boast multiple film adaptations.

Steph: Christmas music is, for the most part, some of the most awful music anyone could ever have the misfortune to hear, especially 50 times a day on repeat.

In 1995 Gregory Maguire published Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. In 2003, Wicked: The Untold Stories of the Witches of Oz premiered on Broadway.

As I am sure many of you gaming aficionados may know, the latest Assassin’s Creed: Assassin’s Creed Revelations came out Nov. 15.

The Island Princess returns this week with Talk That Talk, her latest album.

By the 14th of June, 1940, Paris had fallen to the German army, and the division of France by the Axis Powers began just days later.