We’ve been waiting for it, craving it, praying for it and finally it’s so close that we can touch it: spring break. For one glorious week, USC students will get time off from studying, attending mundane classes and dealing with extracurriculars. For one week, we can forget about that stupid thing called “responsibility” and just [...]

USC’s decision to host a Visions and Voices panel Thursday on queer television just goes to show that more people today are discussing queer characters and their impact on television. Over the past 50 years, television has taken large strides to portray more LGBTQ characters. But though queer television is no longer a niche topic, [...]

The industry’s still on an Oscars high, but the box office has been in the dumps lately. February was off 24 percent from the previous year, and the year as a whole is off to a weak start. To be fair, this week last year was the highest-grossing opening in three months with giant openings [...]

Last week, I wrote about teen fantasy’s tendency to transform folkloric monsters into male love interests — usually to offer female protagonists a taste of immortality. Twilight, Wicked Lovely and even Aimee Carter’s The Goddess Test series hybridize their romantic heroes with more villainous qualities, making their characters appealing because of their dual natures. But [...]

Slash. Hamlet. Bowie. Vertigo. Nas. Goodfellas. Tupac. Sometimes, one word is all you need to make a lasting impact. This week’s New Noise looks at new releases by bands of few words — bands who gave their four-minute melodic visions a single term of endearment. Though the names might be short, the tracks are filled [...]

We’ve all seen the scare-tactic videos that warn people against “out-of-control” rave dances: Grainy footage taken from a small camera hidden in a bag, blurred-out faces of teenagers in an underground cave somewhere in the middle of God-knows-where, doing drugs to the point of death, strobe lights flashing and sex happening right in the middle [...]

It has never been much of a secret that teenagers and young adults’ perceptions of body image are influenced by movie stars and TV shows. In fact, Lena Dunham, star of the HBO show Girls, has received a broad mix of criticism and recognition for her decision to take her average-shaped body and go nude [...]

Last weekend was about as unsurprising at the box office as the majority of the Oscar winners at the ceremony this past weekend. Predictably, most people decided to watch the awards show at home than go out to the movies, as Identity Thief was able to return to its former No. 1 spot with just [...]

This week, Aimée Carter’s latest novel, The Goddess Inheritance, hit bookshelves, continuing the otherworldly literary trend in teen fiction. Following in the footsteps of previous trends featuring vampires, werewolves and fairies, Greek gods and goddesses might be yet another installment in the teen fantasy literary canon, one that really picked up speed with the release [...]

Anyone here having to get ready for midterms? That time of the spring season is definitely creeping up on us. This week’s New Noise capitalizes on the calm before the storm, the laid-back tracks of tranquility released last week that can serve as the soothing soundtrack to one more moment of pre-mid-semester stress-outs. Just let [...]