Los Angeles-based indie rock duo Best Coast is back again with “Fade Away,” the follow-up mini-album to their sophomore record, “The Only Place” (2012). Heavily influenced by Fleetwood Mac’s sentimental tracks about love, “The Only Place” was focused on Best Coast’s hometown, toning down the band’s distortion-happy music to produce a sappier album that pined about their love for...
The day after the first rain of fall, downtown Riverside still had a chill in the air as lights sparked to life for the second annual Long Night of Arts and Innovation. Held in the Mission Inn square and surrounding streets, exhibits showcasing engineering, natural science, singing, dancing and more filled the area with an aura of intellectual stimulation...
If you can’t take joy in gratuitous violence and boobs, you probably won’t find much pleasure in “Machete Kills” — but you should already know that going in. After all, this is a sequel to a movie that was just an expansion of a fake trailer in the midst of the Rodriguez-Tarantino “Grindhouse” films, which were themselves parodies of...
Rarely are we privileged with the opportunity to watch a unique and remarkable English indie rock band perform in Southern California. On Oct. 1, I was lucky enough to make it to the Red Bull Sound Space at KROQ in LA to watch the Arctic Monkeys perform the latest tracks off of their fifth studio recorded album, “AM.” With...
Amidst a post-summer binge of big-budget movies, director Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” combines all the entertainment of a blockbuster with a sense of intensity and intimacy rarely achieved in highly touted films. The result is a superb movie that not only uses crisp texture and haunting audio effects to bend the viewer’s imagination, but also challenges moviegoers to examine the...
Comedian Whitney Cummings’ short-lived TV show, “Whitney,” was excessively, painfully bad. We know this. We’ve accepted this. We’ve moved on. So, too, has Cummings, who brought her act to the Student Recreation Center as part of Welcome Week.
Quick segue here: When you have a flop on your resume, you can either poke fun at what happened, or ignore it...
Opening its old-fashioned wooden gates to a new school year, the Barn welcomed students with its first concert event of the year, featuring opener Gypsies & Judges and headliner Branches. The two bands’ contrasting styles made for an enjoyable and diverse night.
Operating mostly in different jazz styles, Gypsies & Judges consists of singer and trombonist Chloe Keedy, drummer Eric...
Crowds ebbing and flowing, multicolored lights igniting Pierce lawn, the smell of three different tents selling Korean BBQ wafting through the evening air –– Block Party 2013 was nothing short of memorable. The event began with an impressive array of student organizations and a packed crowd for Senryu Taiko’s performance at the Bell Tower, setting a high-energy tone for...
Technically, “Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX” does not provide anything new to fans as it is a remastering of the originals –– but it does offer advanced graphics, and introduces the Japanese exclusive “Final Mix” version of the original game to North America. The game remasters “Kingdom Hearts,” the 2002 title that brought Disney and Final Fantasy characters together....
Director Ron Howard’s newest film, “Rush,” garnered hype for the better part of the past year as fans eagerly awaited to be immersed in riveting controversy and a lot of fast cars. Howard’s film delivers on expectations, as his blend of sound, stunning visuals and a Formula One racing storyline entrances viewers.
“Rush” is based on the 1976 battle between...