Political street art has become an outlet for advocacy among Los Angeles artists after the presidential election. Street art has a long history in the city’s urban culture; several LA streets feature murals with messages. Read more...
Photo: The “Not Our President” mural is painted on the front entrance of The Smell, a music venue in downtown Los Angeles. Owner Jim Smith commissioned artist Sean Solomon to create the design, which Solomon completed in November. (Miriam Bribiesca/Photo editor)
Valeria Morales entered a shop on the Venice boardwalk to get her septum pierced and thought, “Why not?” The first-year statistics student already had 10 piercings, including two cartilage piercings and a belly button piercing. Read more...
Photo: First-year environmental science student Keely Watland has 10 piercings. She said her family has many piercings with bone and wooden jewelry due in part to their Pacific Islander culture. (Frank To/Daily Bruin)
Diversity in film and television came into the spotlight in 2016 with #OscarsSoWhite. A USC study in 2016 found only about a quarter of speaking characters belonged to nonwhite racial groups. Read more...
Hip-hop theater performance “What It Iz!” is like a modern-day version of Shakespeare for Ayanna McKnight. “Spoken word and poetry, in and of itself, go together,” said the third-year theater student. Read more...
Photo: Student actors explored themes of racial injustice and the incarceration system when preparing for the spokenwordical “What It Iz!” (Frank To/Daily Bruin)
Remakes can’t win. Either they aren’t faithful enough to their source material or they are redundant rehashes. Disney’s latest live-action remake, “Beauty and the Beast” brings the tale as old as time to life with special effects and more developed character backstories. Read more...
Photo: (Walt Disney Studios)
Disney is as renowned for its timeless music as for its enchanting animation. Unfortunately, the music of Disney’s reboot of “Beauty and the Beast” verges more toward beastly than beautiful. Read more...
Photo: The 2017 live-action reboot of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” features heavily Auto-Tuned singing by Emma Watson and two versions of the soundtrack’s titular song. (Walt Disney Records)
Susan Egan arrived at the final callback for the character Belle in Disney’s first Broadway musical “Beauty and the Beast” in 1994. The 23-year-old sat in the corner of the room and read “The Mists of Avalon,” a King Arthur story, to keep herself centered and calm among the other young actresses vying for the coveted role. Read more...
Photo: Alumna Susan Egan originated the role of Belle in the first Broadway rendition of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” in the 1990s. (Courtesy of Joan Marcus)
