As the Recess section’s resident film lover, the responsibility to decree the year’s best movies often falls upon my shoulders.
A marble floor comes into focus as the opening credits begin to play. No music, no conversation, just the simple sound of the water swishing across the pavement and a plane's engine booming overhead.
Larry Moneta’s recent comments concerning China were heavily debated among Duke students, but they also revealed a much larger truth: Chinese culture is still a foreign world for most Americans, though more and more Americans now recognize China as a country worthy of their business interests. The language barrier is often perceived to be too large; therefore, its literature tends to receive only sparse attention.
For the most part, my family’s taste in Christmas entertainment is laughably generic. We listen to the holiday radio station and soldier through a thousand wincingly pitchy covers of “Jingle Bell Rock” in the hopes of catching Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s rendition of “Carol of the Bells.”
Last week, Recess released its staff picks for the best culture of 2018. Here are a handful of the best albums released this year.
When students head home for winter break, one board game may figure prominently into their free time: Settlers of Catan.
From the much-hyped return of the “Incredibles” series to a new exhibit at Raleigh’s N.C. Museum of Art, here are the Recess staff’s picks for the best culture of 2018.
When I first discovered Arcade Fire, I hated them with every fiber of my being. I had not heard a second of their music, but my sixth grade self was simply angry that some random indie band from Montreal with an awkward-looking lead singer had “stolen” the Grammy for Album of the Year from the Top 40 artists I listened to at the time. Nowadays, my views are radically different: Arcade Fire is one of my favorite bands, and I have zero interest in Top 40 music.
As the campus trees change color, a chill fills the air and the sense of dread surrounding finals sets in, Duke is settling into winter. Although it may be difficult to feel festive between exams and essays, the holiday season is a great excuse to take a study break. Here are some upcoming wintry events around Duke and the Triangle to explore this month.
One of the more solitary liberal arts, poetry tends to keep a low profile. Although Duke may not offer a creative writing major, its student body and faculty contain numerous avid poets. This was literary talent was evident at the Salon, an annual public poetry reading organized by The Archive, the university’s primary literary magazine, Saturday.
The 1975’s lead singer, Matty Healy’s life is perfectly analogous to what he has produced with his newest album: all over the place. Healy has battled a heroin addiction for years, suffers from depression and anxiety, and has gone so far as to even call himself “Not that mentally stable.”
"Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” directed by David Yates and written by J.K. Rowling, is the newest edition to the wizarding world franchise and “Fantastic Beasts” saga.
The year 2018 was a year that rocked both our greater culture and our individual self-conceptions as consumers of and contributors to that very culture. Accountability is the mainstay, and self-reflection has become a daily requisite for even the most privileged. I think it is time to ask whether we want the media we consume to be held accountable, too, and inquire as to what we might want that accountability to look like.
Duke unveiled President Richard Brodhead’s portrait for the Gothic Reading Room Nov. 2. The painting was done by Bob Anderson, a classmate of Brodhead’s at Yale, who has also painted President George W. Bush on three occasions.
“America is aspirational. To me, Obama is what we would like to be, [but] Donald Trump and his supporters are what we are,” said actor D.L. Hughley on “The View.”
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are not the only times to find great deals on holiday gifts this year. Shop Independent Durham Week, an annual event held by Durham's nonprofit independent business alliance Sustain-a-Bull, kicked off last Saturday and will run through Sunday.
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s magnum opus “Hamilton” has been a cultural phenomenon since its Broadway debut in 2015. The musical’s soundtrack is now a ubiquitous part of American pop culture.
While Duke students head into finals period, two will present the culmination of their work in documentary.
Naps have become a staple of the college experience. College allows sleep-deprived and overly-stressed students to finally recognize the true beauty of a nap and its seemingly limitless healing powers.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, the first floor gallery of the Durham Art Council’s building was filled with people gathered to see artists in their temporary studios and purchase their works. All of the artists who participated in the Art-A-Thon event Nov. 17 and 18 were members of the Durham Art Guild, an organization founded in 1948 by a group of artists.
