As I’ve mentioned in my previous columns, graduating and going out into the real world means having to trade in frat parties and keggers for cocktail parties and art shows and abandon the too-familiar Westwood bars for ones that have a slightly more mature crowd. Read more...

Dorm life usually brings to mind dining halls, study lounges and floor socials. But the somewhat infamous “Frederick of Hedrick” adds a little something extra to the Hill by providing anyone the opportunity to get involved in a theater production, regardless of previous experience or major. Read more...

In January, the British music magazine New Musical Express named the 100 greatest British albums of all time. Mostly, the list contains the usual suspects: The Beatles, Radiohead, The Stone Roses, etc. Read more...

For Christoph Bull, UCLA organ professor and, this weekend, accompanist to the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, sometimes silent movies are best left silent. Read more...

Readers of this column already know that Philip Seymour Hoffman will win the Oscar for Best Actor on Sunday night. He’s in a tight race with Heath Ledger, and though you can’t have too much of a good thing when it comes to acting performances, you can pick a winner. Read more...

The walls are covered with character stills, fliers and movie posters. Large wooden drawing desks dating back to the 1930s border the large classroom in Melnitz Hall; sprawled in the middle are more tables, splotted in every known color of paint. Read more...

His contemporaries often mocked French painter Gustave Courbet as an uncouth country bumpkin. Courbet’s exaggerated provincial accent, physical robustness and unwillingness to conform to the Parisian art scene set him apart as an outspoken outsider. Read more...