Photo Collage of the best three pieces of entertainment for this great week by Arts and Entertainment Editor Olivia Cusick.

  Hello! As the 2022 – 2023 Expressions Arts and Entertainment editor, I wanted to use the wonderful reporting team to reflect the media that students at San Luis Obispo High School enjoy.  In the modern age of technology, new media is constantly being created. The Expressions team is excited to give reviews on a few of these every week. Music, film, television, books, and any art form that students and staff want to discuss, are given a free space to do so.    You too can join the team for the Sunday Showcase! If you are passionate and want to talk about art, email me at [email protected].   I thoroughly hope you enjoy this edition of the Sunday Showcase!

“Hocus Pocus Two” is Unnecessary and Disappointing by reporter Kennedy Beltram

  Many San Luis Obispo High students grew up watching the beloved halloween family film “Hocus Pocus”. The lighthearted jokes and magic keeps the whole family entertained. This classic film was released in 1993 and has been an iconic annual watch for many. 

  Unfortunately, this legacy has been tainted due to the sequel released earlier this month. “Hocus Pocus 2”, the much awaited continuation of the story released 29 years after the original. That is, if you forget the natural conclusion the first movie ended with. 

  The original Hocus Pocus ended with the villains (the Sanderson sisters) being defeated. The black flame candle was lit, and burned down. The movie explained that this meant the sisters were banished, unable to ever return. 

  In the sequel, they miraculously return via a new black flame candle made by a Sanderson sisters enthusiast who felt they were misunderstood. When they return, the first thing they do is a choreographed dance routine and song in the woods. This comes off as forced and slightly off putting. 

  After the dance, they interact with various modern places and technologies. At one point the sisters walk into a Walgreens, the entire scene having egregious product placement. A group of teens approaches the sisters and asks for a selfie. Although confused, the sisters all make the duck face and a snapchat filter appears on their faces. They then leave said walgreens with one sister flying on swiffer a and the other on two rumbas. 

  The entire movie is a messy cluster of modern references and forced goofy conflicts. All the lovable and fun parts of the original movie are missing with confused side plots and flat characters in its place. If SLOHS students are looking for a bad movie to lift their spirits this Halloween, “Hocus Pocus 2” is perfect.

“Drive-By Lullabies” Soothes the Angry Teenage Soul by reporter Lauren Weyel

 San Luis Obispo High School students have never heard music as big and chaotic as quinn’s album “Drive-By Lullabies”. It’s hyperpop taken to the max, it’s defeating the final boss video game music overlaid with angry lyrics, it’s the epitome of an aggrieved teenage soul. quinn was a member of the former hyperpop music collective ‘slowsilver03’, which helped kick-start other hyperpop idol’s careers such as glaive, aldn, and ericdoa. While the more popular members went mainstream to a certain extent, quinn has stayed true to the OG hyperpop sound, evident in the maximalist album “Drive-By Lullabies.”

  The first standout on the album is track two, “from paris, with love.” The maximalist production is almost overwhelming at times, with a thumping baseline and brain melting (often unidentifiable) sounds. The last minute of the song is like looking at one of those stroke simulation pictures — it’s cool and everything is mildly familiar, but you can’t identify any specific part. Is that sound an insect crawling on the mic? Who knows. The lyrics are more of an accompaniment to the production rather than being featured, but still carry quinn’s core themes of excessive toughness and anger, perhaps born out of a place of fear. “from paris, with love” is certain to make any student feel cooler if listening between classes.

  quinn leans on warped vocals, the largest pillar of hyperpop, throughout the whole album but the best example is “silly”. The production is quieter than “from paris, with love” but there are just as many components. quinn repeats “Does it get better with time? Does it get better, boss?” with “It was so silly of me to ask” underneath it for most of the song. To keep things interesting, the vocals get more and more glitched and warped as the song progresses until the original statement is almost unrecognizable. The piece starts relatively confident and motivated, but quinn seems to become more jaded as the song progresses, demonstrated in the production overtaking the vocals in volume halfway through and the growing distortion of the vocals at the end of the song.

  “mallgrabber p” is one of the more fun songs on the album (beat wise). It starts with freeway background noise which continues throughout the song, demo-quality vocals, and single notes played on a base as the instrumentation. The song is much more lyric-heavy opposed to the rest of the album with hardly any repetition, which quinn usually relies on. The lyrics are in almost direct opposition to the bubbly melody with rhymes such as “I’ve got skeletons in my closet / I won’t act like you’ve never saw it / But now, I know I have to clean it out / And if not, then at least to lock it.” However, the dichotomy is a good contrast to quinn’s often intense lyrics and production.

  The album closes with “i’m here for a good time, not a long time”, a dumping ground for all of the extra production ideas that quinn couldn’t work into any of the other songs. Similar to much of the album, it’s lyrically light, making the production the highlight. In only a minute and 31 seconds, quinn fits in over four complete shifts in the song’s color, displaying composition and production prowess.

  “Drive-By Lullabies” makes it obvious why quinn is now mostly a producer. The lyrics are merely complements to the beats, a tool to be manipulated just like any other instrument can be, a technique that makes quinn’s work especially compelling. While definitely not mainstream and definitely not light pop music, it is still worth a listen, if only to get a masterclass in modern music production.

Review of Won-pyung Sohn’s “Almond” by Editor-in-Chief Izzy Nino de Rivera-Kriegar

Genre: Contemporary bildungsroman

Izzy’s Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆

Price (Retail): $16.99

Price (Barnes and Noble/Amazon): $14.99

Length: 220 pages

Any warnings?: Graphic violence, death, murder, animal cruelty, and bullying.

  I used to be able to win the prompt in Never Have I Ever, “Never have I ever cried to a book for 15 minutes straight”. 

  Nope. Not anymore.

  Ironically, the book that made me so emotional was the book about a person without emotions – Well, even that’s complicated.

  “Almond” is the story of Yunjae, who suffers from alexithymia, where the amygdala, the almond-shaped mass of grey matter in the brain that allows us to experience emotion, is small or underdeveloped. Therefore, Yunjae doesn’t experience emotions of anger or fear or happiness.

  Even when his mother and grandmother are brutally attacked in front of him, causing his mother to plunge into a vegetative state and his grandmother to die.

  Yet Yunjae didn’t feel anything. He only saw red during that random act of violence that changed his life.

  Left to care for himself and his mother’s used bookstore at 16, he has the help of the heart surgeon turned baker on the second floor, Dr. Shim, but it’s not the same without his mother.

  It’s through a strange set of circumstances, after severe bullying at high school, that Yunjae meets troubled teenager Gon, who moves to his school after reconnecting with his father. 

  He begins to have more perspective into human emotion, and although they start off on an awful note, this friendship is one of the most poignant and touching bonds I’ve read in literature. Two outcasts, who are polar opposites, yet discover things about the world, each other, and themselves throughout the book.

  I got so attached to these two boys and their friendship. Through them, it took me through the process of relearning how to feel again.

  Gon and Yunjae throughout the book come to answer the question “What makes someone human?”

  It’s not emotions, and it’s not reactions or certain “redeeming” actions to others.

  It’s both love and our relationships that make us human.

  And not only does love make someone human, but it heals and brings us closer – This book was an affirmation that needed to be heard. I couldn’t put it down. 

  From one late morning to an early evening, I became completely enthralled with Yunjae’s story.

  Something remarkable about this book and about its unique storyline is that in contrast to the distant narration Yunjae provides, he’s surrounded by emotionally vibrant characters. The translator’s note at the end describes how she struggled between both liberal and literal translation to craft Yunjae’s distant tone in the original Korean manuscript. The brilliant translation absorbs readers into Yunjae’s world, 

  Another aspect I admire about the book is its small chapters – and in Sohn’s case, less is so much more. It made the story coherent and in every chapter, its poigniacy never falters.

  Toasts to the best friendship in literature since Frog and Toad – I’d give this book a hug if I could.

  I’m available for some book recommendations/consultations at [email protected] and through Instagram at @starryybella, and all my reviews are available on both slohsexpressions.com or StoryGraph on @nantendayo. Feel free to email me or message me about books, or to maybe recommend some books for me to talk about in this column. I’d also love to hear about your reactions to this book if you read it. Just please, send your name and your grade level (or if you’re a staff member) in the email. 

Source: barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, thestorygraph.com