The Signal

The cast of “Something Rotten!” (Photo by Mckenna Super)

News

TCNJ Musical Theatre presents ‘Something Rotten!’

By Maia Venuti | Mar. 25

TCNJ Musical Theatre presented its mainstage musical “Something Rotten!” for the spring semester. The show is a satirical take on Shakespeare, telling the story of two brothers struggling to make it big in the theatre world while being in competition with William Shakespeare. There were four shows, starting on Thursday, Feb. 29 and continuing through Saturday, March 2.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr / “snapchat” by Stock Catalog / July 9, 2018)

News

OPINION: The dystopian reality of Austin McBroom

By Maia Venuti | Feb. 26

Family vlogging, the idea of filming one’s children to upload on social media to garner views and fame, is a rather new concept that has only gained popularity in the past 15 years. Some families become so famous for vlogging that their children become more like cash cows instead of tiny humans with sentience who are affected by their parent’s actions. This cannot be more true for the ACE Family.

(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons / The Conmunity - Pop Culture Geek, Feb. 24, 2012)

News

96th Oscars Predictions: Snubs, triumphs and flops

By Maia Venuti | Feb. 14

The nominees for the 96th Oscars awards were released at the end of January, with a myriad of incredible and deserving films being put up for nomination. Every film and person nominated for an award this year is extremely deserving of such an achievement, and their hard work is worthy of praise.

Recently released “Napoleon '' received some criticism from audiences (Photo courtesy of IMDb).

Opinion

OPINION: ‘Napoleon’ was a disappointing, inaccurate film

By Maia Venuti | Dec. 25

Ridley Scott’s latest film, “Napoleon” starring Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby was released on Nov. 24. The film is a biopic telling the story of failed French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, and has been met with mixed reviews and criticism since its release.

Matt Rife’s Netflix special received poor reviews (Photo courtesy of IMDb).

Opinion

OPINION: Matt Rife isn’t funny

By Maia Venuti | Dec. 11

On Nov. 15, stand-up comedian Matt Rife released his first special with Netflix, titled “Matt Rife: Natural Selection.” It was met with a 16% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is one of the lowest scores I have ever personally seen for a standup special.

Opinion

OPINION: Nicholas Cage IS a good actor

By Maia Venuti | Nov. 21

“Moonstruck” shows that Cage has the range to do romantic comedies, and that he gives consistently good performances when the film is well written, as he has been doing for nearly four decades. To jump ahead to the 2010s, as Cage’s career grew, he began to take more and more roles in more and more movies. There were a lot of reasons for this, but the primary one was that Cage was severely in debt throughout the 2000s and 2010s, owing as much as $6 million during the real estate market crash. Because Cage owed so much money, he needed to find ways to make more money to repay his debts, and did so by taking on multiple projects per year.

The way folks act in movie theaters is changing — for the worse (Photo courtesy of Flickr / “A movie theater in Japan” by Margutta.jp / May 15, 2010).

Opinion

OPINION: Decorum is disappearing in movie theaters

By Maia Venuti | Nov. 20

In the past few weeks, two movies came out that are extremely important to two very distinct fanbases. They are “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour”, and “Five Nights at Freddy’s” (FNAF). One film is a concert film of the entire three hour Taylor Swift Eras concert, and the other is a film adaptation of an iconic horror game franchise. These two movies and their fan bases are different, but they share a blatant commonality: a complete utter absence of decorum and manners in movie theaters where the films are shown.

Midsommar's movie poster (photo courtesy of IMDb).

News

Midsommar Director’s Cut: A disappointing dupe

By Maia Venuti | Nov. 10

A24 Production company re-released some of its most popular horror films in participating theaters throughout the month of October in the spirit of Halloween. The studio announced that “The Witch” (2015), “X” (2022) and “Under the Skin” (2013) would return to theaters, and the fourth and final film in this series would be the director’s cut of Ari Aster’s 2019 masterpiece, “Midsommar.”