April entertainment guide: What's coming to streaming services

This article originally appeared in ZU News.

While social distancing measures and stay inside orders remain in place, it’s easy to get a bit restless. However, all the free time does allow for something Azusa Pacific students might not normally have time for — binge watching.

Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and Amazon Prime are all adding tons of hit movies and new bingeworthy shows in the next month. We’ve broken them down by streaming service so you can plan out what to watch.

Netflix

As usual, Netflix is adding dozens of titles on the first of the month, but this is no April fools prank. There are many award winning movies and series all being released on the same day. 

For comedy lovers, Netflix is adding two comedy specials: “David Batra: Elefanten I Rummet” and “The Iliza Shlesinger Sketch Show.” The platform is also bringing back all six seasons of hit sitcom “Community,” a must watch lighthearted show that stars Donald Glover before he became Childish Gambino. Netflix is also adding one of the greatest comedy movies of all time:“The Hangover.” Even if you saw it 10 years ago, it’s just as dumb and funny now.

If you’re more of an action fan, Netflix has you covered. The entire “Lethal Weapon” series is being released on April 1, and no, you’re not too old for that. “The Matrix” trilogy is also coming back, along with hit movies “Deep Impact,” “Salt” and “Sherlock Holmes.”

For drama fans, Netflix is adding academy award winning film, “The Social Network.” Even if you don’t like Facebook, this one is a must watch. Other dramas include hit Christian movie “God’s Not Dead,” Martin Scorsese classic “Taxi Driver” and teenage drama “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”

Movies for the rest of the month include “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” (April 2), recent hit “Angel Has Fallen” (April 4), animated gold “Despicable Me” (April 16), best picture winner “The Artist” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” (April 25).

Netflix will also release more than 50 original films, shows, comedy specials, documentaries, and family shows. Notable Netflix originals include “Extraction” starring Chris Hemsworth (April 24), “Tigertail” an autobiographical feature from “Parks and Rec’s” Alan Yang (April 10) and a killer comedy special in “Chris D’Elia: No Pain.”

Here is the full list of titles coming to Netflix in April.

Hulu

In case you didn’t know, all college students can get Hulu for free with a Spotify subscription. So you should definitely have access to all of the great titles coming to Hulu in April.

On April 1, Hulu is releasing comedy-western classic “Blazing Saddles,” post-apocalyptic action flick “The Book of Eli,” Steve Carell comedy “Get Smart,” both volumes of Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” young Tom Cruise hit “Risky Business,” the original “Spider-Man” and horror-comedy “Zombieland.”

Unfortunately, Hulu is only releasing a couple noteworthy movies during the rest of the month. Fortunately enough, these include the most recent best picture “Parasite” (April 8) and Kevin Bacon classic “Footloose” (April 29).

Hulu will also release new seasons of “Chopped,” “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives,” “House Hunters,” “Married at First Sight,” and “Property Brothers” on April 1. The rest of the month will also see the series premieres of “The Bachelor: Listen to Your Heart” (April 14) and “Mrs. America” (April 15).

Here is a full list of titles coming to Hulu in April.

HBO

While HBO never adds as many titles as the other services, the ones they add are almost always big name movies and shows. This month is no exception for the Home Box Office.

HBO is releasing several original shows and movies, including “Run” (April 12), a show about a woman who runs away from her life with a college sweetheart, and “Bad Education” (April 25), a film based on the true story of the largest single public school embezzlement scandal in history starring Hugh Jackman, Allison Janney, Ray Romano and Alex Wolff.

HBO will also release four hits from 2019. These include “Good Boys” (April 4), “IT: Chapter Two” (April 11), “The Art of Racing in the Rain” (April 18) and “Stuber” (April 19).

Other big movies coming to HBO on April 1 include the raunchy “American Pie” series, the first three “Die Hard” action flicks, Robert Downey Jr. drama “The Judge,” psychological thriller “The Lovely Bones,” Vin Diesel hit “The Pacifier,” best picture winner “Slumdog Millionaire,” critically acclaimed “Sophie’s Choice,” Jonah Hill comedy “War Dogs” and the original “X-Men.”

Here is a full list of titles coming to HBO in April.

Amazon Prime

If you don’t have an Amazon Prime subscription, what are you doing with your life? If you do, Amazon’s got you covered with an extensive list of titles coming out in April. 

First, get your James Bond fix with 21 installations from 007. These include “Goldfinger,” “A View To A Kill,” “Diamonds Are Forever,” “Die Another Day,” “Dr. No,” “For Your Eyes Only,” “From Russia With Love,” “Goldeneye,” “Licence to Kill,” “Live And Let Die,” “Moonraker,” “Never Say Never Again,” “Octopussy,” “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” “The Living Daylights,” “The Man With The Golden Gun,” “The Spy Who Loved Me,” “The World Is Not Enough,” “Thunderball,” “Tomorrow Never Dies” and “You Only Live Twice.” 

Other hit movies coming to Prime include Will Smith thriller “I am Legend” (April 1), Whitney Houston romance “The Bodyguard” (April 1), Cannes Film Festival winner “Invisible Life” (April 3), Sylvester Stallone’s 800th action movie “Rambo: Last Blood” (April 10) and black and white cult horror “The Lighthouse” (April 16). 

Prime will release several new and debut seasons of shows, but “Bosch” is the only noteworthy one. Season six of “Bosch” will come out on April 17.

Here is a full list of what’s coming to Prime in April.

Moxy Anne Brings Beauty to the Broken Through Music

This article was originally published in ZU News.

Dozens of people gather in an alley next to Guitar Ninjas in Burbank. It’s 6:30 p.m. on a mid-September Saturday and the show is about to start. Families munch on tacos as two women dressed in ripped black jeans and leather jackets take the stage. Heartless the Duo is about to perform and they’re going to rock this quiet Burbank neighborhood, even if it’s only for an hour.

The duo opens with a classic from their namesake band, Heart, belting Barracuda like it’s 1977. Sydney Ellen strums her acoustic guitar, while Azusa Pacific alumna Moxy Anne (her stage name) sings the rock anthem, ‘You’d have me down, down, down on my knees/ Now wouldn’t you, Barracuda?’ Moxy’s voice is as deep and powerful as Heart’s lead singer Ann Wilson.

The duo follows with another rock ballad, Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On.” They have sang this song a thousand times, and it shows. Moxy builds up, staying quiet into the chorus, before letting the full rasp of her voice come out when she sings ‘Ramble on/ And now’s the time, the time is now/ To sing my song/ I’m going ‘round the world.’ 

Though she’s just in an alley of an LA suburb at the moment, this last line rings true for Moxy. Just months before, she was halfway across the planet, in China with the APU Chamber Singers.

***

Moxy and the Chamber Singers began their journey in Hong Kong in July, just two months after she graduated in May 2019 with a commercial music degree. The Chamber Singers performed at churches and other venues across the city. One of Moxy’s best memories from the trip happened on the group’s day off  in the city, which fell on her 22nd birthday. 

“My best friend and I decided to explore. We took the train to old-town Hong Kong. We found a secret bookstore and this little tea place. We just walked around and looked at old things. Then we got an amazing dinner and watched Victoria Harbor at night,” she said. “It’s such a beautiful city, with such friendly people. I want to go back, but I don’t know if they’ll let me.”

She is only half joking. 

On Aug. 30, Moxy released her first song as a solo artist, entitled ‘The Egg.’ Unlike the other rock songs she sings, this song is quite peaceful, quiet. Instead of sounding fierce, she sounds fragile. This is deliberate. In ‘The Egg,’ Moxy tells a story.

The song is a journey through multiple perspectives on the Hong Kong protests, which started after proposals of a bill that would allow Hong Kongers to be extradited to mainland China for any reason. The first verse opens with the Chinese government’s view, ‘Don’t go there/ Don’t do that,’ referencing how the government doesn’t want to let the people have their freedom. The second verse reinforces this, ‘Don’t act out/ Don’t play with fire/ Don’t grow up,’ showing how the government commands their people to not fight back.

The third verse changes perspective ‘Dare to think/ Dare to speak/ Dare to act.’ This ironic sentiment plays on the mottos of the Communist government and former Chairman Mao Zedong. 

“That was something they told the peasants of rural mainland China when they encouraged them to join the Communist movement. They told them, ‘Dare to think. Dare to speak. Dare to act,’” Moxy said. “I took that and turned it on its head, turning it into a transition from the voice of China to the voice of the Hong Kongers.”

The next two verses continue the pleas of the Hong Kongers, ‘We don’t want to watch it burn/ We just want the tides to turn/ And wash it all away/ And when we’re against the wall/ Standing on our last leg/ And when we have to choose/ I stand with the egg.’ 

This verse answers the command of the Chinese government saying ‘Don’t play with fire,’ by saying ‘We don’t want to watch it burn.’ Moxy said the Hong Kongers are just fighting for their freedom, not to destroy anything. The verse also hints at the title of the song in the line, ‘I stand with the egg.’ 

“It’s a very Eastern way of thinking. It comes from a quote [pictured below] from a Japanese author named Haruki Murakami,” Moxy said. “Essentially, the egg is a metaphor for our souls and for the ability of right to emerge as victorious over wrong, over oppression, over anything that tries to bring people down.”

Although the song is not a worship song at all, nor does Moxy categorize herself as a Christian artist, the song does reference two anthems of the Hong Kong protest based in Christianity. The lines are ‘Pray for us,’ and ‘Sing Hallelujah to the Lord.’ These were intentionally incorporated  into the song. As Moxy said, you cannot tell the story of the protests without them.

Moxy wrote and published this song in less than a month, an incredible turnaround time for a professional song. She said it was important to be as timely as she could be about it. She went on to perform it at the Hong Kong rally in Los Angeles just days after it was released.

“Performing at the Hong Kong rally in Los Angeles was incredible because I got to meet people who were free to express what they believed in and free to voice their opinions about the protests,” she said. “I love America because regardless of what the government is saying, we still have the freedom to express what we believe in … A lot of the people at the rally didn’t understand what I was singing in English, but they clapped for me anyways. People were genuinely happy because of my song, which is what I wanted.”

***

After ‘Ramble On,’ Moxy dives into her repertoire of rocks classics with Pat Benetar’s ‘Hit Me With Your Best Shot,’ followed by Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love,’ all the while trying to get the crowd to join in.

“You guys know you can sing along right,” she laughed. “It’s alright. I’m just glad you guys are watching. We’re used to people not paying attention at the gigs we do.”

After the Rick Astley bop, ‘Never Gonna Give You Up,’ got a few spectators to join in, Moxy was encouraged and decided to try to amp up the energy. 

“Are you guys ready?”  she asked. “We’re going to play the best rock song in the history of the world.”

After just one chord, everyone knew exactly what song she was singing. The crowd cheered and people who were quiet all night started singing Journey’s ‘Don’t Stop Believin.’’ Moxy looked at Sydney and smiled, rejuvenated by the crowd’s newly intensified spirit.

Moxy followed this up with ‘Shallow’ from “A Star is Born,” giving Lady Gaga a run for her money when it came to the chorus, ‘I’m off the deep end, watch as I dive in/ I’ll never meet the ground/ Crash through the surface, where they can’t hurt us/ We’re far from the shallow now.’

Much like Gaga in the beginning of her career, Moxy has the talent and the enthusiasm to become a star. She’s working these small gigs for now as it’s all she can get, but she’s happy to just be singing with her best friend. 

“I would love for performing to be the way I make a living,” she said. 

Moxy ends the night with two more of the greatest rock songs ever, Heart’s ‘Crazy On You,’ and Led Zeppelin’s ‘Stairway to Heaven.’ Moxy sings these last tunes with more intensity than any of the previous songs, losing herself for a bit in the fast paced final verse of ‘Stairway,’ ‘And if you listen very hard/ The tune will come to you at last/ When all are one and one is all/ To be a rock and not to roll.’

The crowd applauds, then gives the duo hugs, before filing out. The night is quiet again.

***

After releasing ‘The Egg,’ Moxy released her next single, ‘Bella’s song.’ This track was named after her sister, and her story of struggling through anxiety and depression before overcoming it.

In the coming weeks, Moxy will release a song entitled ‘Haunted’ about her ex, followed by several songs from her senior recital at APU. She plans on releasing them together as an EP by the end of the year, and hopes to come out with another EP of original songs next year.

Moxy’s songs vary from singer/songwriter to hardcore rock. One night she’s in her all black punk outfit singing rock covers, and the next day she’s singing in a church. While the style of her music might change, her intention behind it does not.

“One thing that’s always been important to me, regardless of what kind of music I’m doing, is that it’s uplifting to people,” she said. “My reason for doing music is because I want to bring beauty to people who are broken.”

Sam Denton is going for it

This article was originally published on ZU News.

Just one year after graduating from Azusa Pacific, Sam Denton is already working toward his dream of becoming a professional musician.

Denton’s first EP, For Now, dropped today, marking his first real foray into the music world. He has released five singles, including two that appear on the EP, which have accumulated nearly 250,000 streams on Spotify, but For Now represents more than just a few hit singles.

“These are things I’m dealing with now,” he said. “I’m letting myself be a little bit more emotional about things.”

The first single off the EP is entitled “Smoke in the Mirror”. In it, Denton explores the feelings he still has for a past relationship. He questions whether the feelings are real, or whether they are just deceptions in the chorus, ‘Smoke in the mirror/clouds in my eyes/got me over here questioning why I couldn’t realize/that you are over me/you’ll never be mine/got these rose colored lenses jading my mind.’

Denton recorded this song with his friend Samiere. He said their shared experiences made them want to record a song together.

“We found out we both had similar experiences with an ex-love interest type of person in our lives … we could understand where each other was coming from,” Denton said. “We could both write something cohesive that wasn’t going to feel like it was two different stories.”

The second single from For Now, “I Just Might,” plays off similar themes of falling out of love. Denton is honest in the chorus, singing ‘I know that I won’t be forgetting you for a long time/but if you want me to/well, I just might.’ “I just might” deals with a sad subject, but the background music, filled with synth and soft guitar chords, makes the song seem less sad, and actually upbeat and hopeful. 

“I want to be as authentic as possible in my music because that’s when people will be able to relate to it,” he said. “I’m trying to do something meaningful. I want to bring people together and make them feel like they’re not alone in the things that they’re feeling … to create music that is both catchy and songs that people will feel something real from.”

Denton’s work accomplishes this. His music is similar to artists like Lauv and Lany. They are all real in their lyrics and the pain behind them is evident. But the songs themselves make the subjects feel less full of pain, and more full of hope.

“I try to be really honest with where I’m at, addressing that,” Denton said. “I’ve tried to figure out how to process things and I still don’t really know, but I think writing music has been the one thing that has been really therapeutic for me.”

***

It’s July 27, and Denton is performing alongside two other artists, a local band and a singer from the East Coast, at a SoFar Sounds San Gabriel Valley concert. 

SoFar promises intimate shows, and they delivered on that front. Some thirty people, mostly teenagers and twenty-somethings, cram into the back room of an office building in Glendora. 

The cement floors and solid walls were obviously not designed with acoustics in mind, but the audience doesn’t care. They came to hear the artists sing. Many of them came just for Denton, who headlined.

When it’s his time, Denton walks on “stage” and introduces himself. He is vested in an oversized yellow button down, and has a red electric guitar slung over his shoulder. Denton’s slim figure looks like the textbook definition of a hipster, minus the glasses.

Denton opens with his most popular song, “Back to You.” His soft voice and guitar fill the room, as he sings about constantly wandering back to the same bad habits. He personified these habits as a person, but the song really just represents his struggles of being stuck in the same kind of patterns.

Denton sings two more originals before asking the crowd if they want to hear a cover. 

“Do you guys like Daniel Cesar?” he asks.

The crowd responds with enthusiasm and Denton launches into his version of the Grammy winning single, “Best Part.” The song is already a masterpiece, but Denton somehow manages to put his own spin on it, and he pulls it off.

Denton is a natural on stage. He doesn’t move around much, but he doesn’t have to. He just strums his guitar and let’s loose into the microphone, capturing the audience with his voice. It’s a small stage, but he’ll see bigger ones soon.

***

Denton has known he has wanted to be a singer for a long time. He started writing his first songs in middle school. While Denton knew music was the career he wanted to go into, his family wasn’t always supportive of his dreams.

“My parents told me they loved me but they really encouraged me to do something else,” Denton said. “I wanted to be a music major when I got here. If my dad had it his way, I would have been a business major. I compromised and chose communications.”

Although he didn’t study music, Denton was able to refine his craft by joining Men’s Chorale. In the group, he met another musician named Nathan Bowman and the two became instant friends. 

Bowman helps create the background music for all of Denton’s songs. After working with Bowman, Denton knew he needed to decide whether or not to commit to music.

“At a certain point in college, I just decided to go for it. I knew I would regret it if I didn’t try,” Denton said. “When I was wrestling with that decision, I was just really struggling with the idea of God’s will for my life. I second guessed myself so much. I feel like God has given me this and wants me to do something. This is the best way I can glorify him, so I’ve got to try and I know he’s going to be with me throughout the whole thing.”

APU Alumnus L.P. Leung Produces Lifelong Dream “The Jade Pendant”

This article originally appeared on ZU News.

For most people, getting rejected is disheartening and often a reason to give up. For L.P. Leung, it was just a hiccup on the road to achieving his dream. He spent more than 50 years on the road to making his own movie and his perseverance has finally paid off.

In the 1950s, Leung was a history major at Azusa College, before it rebranded as Azusa Pacific University. It was in one of his history classes that he discovered a story which would change his life.

In “American History of the West,” Leung read about an event called the Chinese Massacre of 1871. He had never heard of it before and wanted to find out more, but his textbook offered little information.

“It [was] just like one paragraph, no details in there. I thought it [was] kind of interesting. I wanted to find out more,” Leung said. “I went to the library and found nothing, so I could not do the term paper that I wanted to do on this particular issue.”

The topic sparked Leung’s curiosity, but he set it aside for a few years. He then attended the University of Southern California (USC) for graduate school, earning a master’s degree in accounting.

Leung didn’t know what jobs he could get with a history degree but decided he could easily find a job in accounting. The degree change worked well for him, as he spent the next 30 years working as an accountant. However, his curiosity about the Chinese massacre was not sated.

“In my free time, I went to the LA City Library to do some more research, to see if I could get some information back [from the massacre] in 1871. I found some microfiche [old newspaper clips] mentioning about the massacre,” Leung said.

Unfortunately, the only information the microfiche provided him with was the death toll of the massacre. Leung was not deterred. He kept researching. He decided to look more into Chinese immigrant life in Los Angeles in the 1870s. He read and read, finding as much information out as he could.

Leung worked for Paramount Pictures after he graduated from USC. He became enamored with the idea of making a movie about the massacre. He discussed the possibility of the movie with a producer he worked with who told him Americans were not ready for it at the time. So Leung set it aside again, until he retired more than three decades later.

In 2012, Leung was retired and bored. He needed something to do and he thought back to the story from all those years earlier. He decided to follow through with making the movie.

Leung, who is originally from Hong Kong, called an old friend who still lived there and was in the movie business. Leung’s friend told him to come to Hong Kong so they could further discuss Leung’s idea. So Leung prepared an excerpt of the story.

“I went to Hong Kong with the treatment and then he spent five minutes with me because he was so busy,” Leung said. “He said, ‘Well LP, your treatment is not good enough. You may as well write a book because that way [it’s] easier to sell to producers.’ So I came back home and I started the writing.”

The writing process proved to be challenging for Leung as Cantonese is his first language. He wrote while his wife edited his work. In 2013, the book was published, entitled “The Jade Pendant.”

After the book was published, Leung flew back to Hong Kong to see his friend again. Although his friend was unable to help him, Leung met a woman on the flight who was interested in his movie idea and wanted to help.  Her husband had just acted in a movie and he said he might know a screenwriter who could help.

Leung found the screenwriter and showed him his book. The screenwriter loved it and agreed to write the screenplay for him. This process took about a year, while they took the screenplay around to several producers, but no one was interested in it.

“Not a whole lot of love,” Leung said. “No love, in fact, to try and get people to produce it.”

Leung was dejected, but did not relent. He went back to Hong Kong to meet with another writer.

“I gave him the book and told him the story. I said if you can do it, I’d like to have this movie done in one year because I’m not a young chick anymore. At that time I was 77 years old,” Leung said.

The writer thought on it for a few weeks and then emailed Leung that he would do it. Together, they found a producer and a director and began making the movie.

“We started shooting in the end of September and we finished shooting in the beginning of November,” Leung said. “It took another year and a half for the movie for all the dumping [editing] and the subtitling before it was ready in 2017.”

The movie was finished in 2017, but only now, in February 2019, will it play on the big screen. Leung worked with Michael Gregory, the chair of APU’s Department of Cinematic Arts, and other administrators at APU to get the movie booked at Foothill Cinema Stadium 10, right across the street from APU. “The Jade Pendant” will be shown from Feb. 15-21 with three showtimes a day. Tickets can be purchased here.

[caption id="attachment_17249" align="alignright" width="1028"] The movie poster of "Jade Pendant." The movie will be shown from Feb. 15-21 with three showtimes a day at Foothill Cinema Stadium.[/caption]

“I’m so happy because I got the support of APU,” Leung said.

Leung hopes many APU students will attend. He is working with the theater to bring the ticket prices down to $5 for APU students, to give them the opportunity to learn about this unknown part of local history.

“I consider that a part of history that our schools do not want to tell because it is not a good story to tell,” Leung said. “I just want to make it an entertaining movie, at the same time being informative.”

Leung also hopes students will learn from his personal story and understand that being rejected a few times is not the end.

“One thing I hope they learn is that if you persevere, work hard, you can reach your goals in a lot of things that you can think of,” Leung said. “Perseverance helped me to go through this to write the book and the movie. If you have a goal, go ahead and do it. Pursue it. Don’t give up.”

"The Crucible" Opens Feb. 15, Giving A Timely Message

This article was originally published in ZU News.

Azusa Pacific’s rendition of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible opens Feb. 15 and will run through Feb. 25 in the Warehouse Theater. This classic play focuses on a town transformed by accusations of witchcraft in the 17th century.

Even though the play is over 60 years old and is set over three centuries ago, director Oanh Nguyen thinks the message is just as appropriate as ever.

“I believe even Miller would be surprised how The Crucible has only become more timely. Whether you follow the themes of fear, hysteria and scapegoating or connect to the themes of overcoming personal demons and humiliations, there is something here for everyone,” Nguyen said. “Our goal as a company has been to be as truthful to these characters as possible. Present them as human beings and leave the judgement to the audience.”

One of the leading characters in The Crucible, Abigail Williams, is played by senior acting major Dawn Williams.

“I was nervous that it was going to be a lot more tolling on me than it has been. I’ve been in heavier shows before and I’ve played evil characters and I’ve been exhausted by it, because I feel like I’m a nice person,” Williams said. “But this show is all in the text. Everything that you’re supposed to feel is really easy to feel because of the way the town and characters are set up. It’s all been easy because it’s authentic.”

This is Williams’ seventh and final play at APU.

“I wasn’t sure that I would get cast this semester. I thought last semester might be my last show as Lucinda in Into the Woods. The last line that I get to say in this show is ‘Praise God.’ That’s a great line to end on,” Williams said. “Although people will hate my character, I’m hoping that they will also love her for the struggle and the journey she goes through.”

Like Nguyen, Williams said that she feels the message of The Crucible is still relevant.

“The story lends itself to some profound issues, especially in a society that’s dealing with issues in social media. It touches on the risks of deception. We want to be a truthful culture, but so much of our news and media is lies. The world today is seeking truth and looking for places to find it,” Williams said. “This play is the downfall of humanity in their seek for truth. Abigail knows she doesn’t need to do much to turn the town upside down because she knows the town wants the truth and turns the lies into truth.”

One of the other leading actors in the show is sophomore acting major Sam Bixby. Bixby said he was excited to play a dynamic character.

“When I first got cast, I was very excited because I got cast as Reverend John Hale. He’s a minister in a town called Beverly. He comes in as this kick-butt kind of guy in all matters of demonic arts. He’s very religious,” Bixby said. “A lot of literary journals say that Hale experiences the most change over the course of the show, and I agree. Over the course of the four acts, he gets pummeled into the ground.”

Bixby said this play was more work than when he was in Into the Woods because the rehearsal time was limited.

“We started our first rehearsal on Jan. 6, so we’ve really had a short rehearsal time, especially for Arthur Miller who is arguably one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th century and this is one of his meatiest plays. So to do that in a month and a half was a challenge to say the least,” Bixby said. “One of the most useful parts of rehearsal is living in a character. You start to think like the character and your characteristics become that of the character during rehearsal.”

Nguyen said that the limited rehearsal time has created challenges but the crew has adapted.

“Due to the limited rehearsal time and the length of the play, we asked the cast to learn their lines before rehearsals began,” Nguyen said. “That is a difficult task but the cast was more than up to [it].”

Nguyen said he has enjoyed working with the students on The Crucible.

“I tend to work on musicals or new plays, so it’s been fun to work on an American Classic,” Nguyen said. “It’s been a joy to work on Miller’s words and rummage around in this detailed, complicated and emotional world that he has created.”

The show runs Feb. 15-25, with Thursday through Saturday performances at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday performances at 2 p.m. in the Warehouse Theater on West Campus.

Hungry Coug App Makes Managing Dining Points A Breeze

This article was originally published in ZU News.

APU students have always had the freedom to spend dining points across campus, but tracking how many points you have has always been a struggle. That is until Kyle Nakamura and Montrell Thigpen created the Hungry Coug app on Feb. 7.

The Hungry Coug app allows you to track the amount of dining points you have, alongside how many you should have for any dining plan. This means that you no longer have to guess if you have enough points, nor worry about spending too much, because the app tells you if you are over or under.

Hungry Coug is available on the App Store (iOS) and the Google Play Store (Android) for free. It has 831 downloads as of March 3. It only takes a couple minutes to install and set up, just logging in with your APU email and password.

“I think that the Hungry Coug app is very useful,” Garrett Davis said, a freshmen Christian Ministries major. “There was no way for me to keep track before the app.”

Davis said that he’s been cutting back on how many dining points he’s been spending, thanks to the app.

As well as tracking how many dining points you have, it has the dining hours of all restaurants on campus. This means you never have to walk to Mexicali at 9 p.m. only to find out it’s closed, just conveniently pull it up on your phone.

The last feature is a menu for each dining venue. It just takes a second to pull up and it has all the nutrition information for your food.

“I’d give it a solid four stars out of five,” Davis said.

Nakamura, a junior computer science major, started working on the app in April 2016.

“I spent my entire summer vacation learning Apple’s new programming language, Swift, adding new features to Hungry Coug as I learned,” Nakamura said. “I spent a long time deciding on what icons to use for the restaurants and designing the user interface on my own, which was difficult since I have no formal background in graphics and UX design.”

He designed the entire app for iOS by himself; however, he turned to a friend, Montrell Thigpen, to create the same app for Android. Thigpen, also a junior computer science major, had more experience with Android apps.

“He created the entire Android app based on my design, and we have been building the app together for the past month,” Nakamura said.

With no previous experience in app design whatsoever before starting Hungry Coug, Nakamura learned from an online design course called Udemy.

“Hungry Coug started as a way for me to practice my programming skills since this was my first iPhone app at the time,” Nakamura said. “I was motivated to create this app because of my frustration with the existing system for tracking my Dining Points and the process of checking how many points I was supposed to have in order to stay on track.

“Before Hungry Coug, I had to refer to an excel spreadsheet every day to see how many dining points I should have at any given time. My app updates and calculates everything automatically; no more spreadsheets, no more log-in screens.”

There was a brief problem between Nakamura and Thigpen with IMT, but it has since been resolved. They are now working closely with IMT to make sure the app is secure for all students.

“Feedback has been generally great. Students love it. Teachers love it. Hungry Coug is one of the hottest things on campus,” Thigpen said. “I think the best email we’ve gotten was from Shino Simmons, the Associate Dean of Students at APU, who congratulated our efforts and encouraged a partnership between Jefferey Birch (Chief Technology Officer) and James Jenson (head of IMT) on making Hungry Coug secure, fast, and reliable.”

Thigpen has previous experience in app design. He has made two other apps for Androids, including one that made it to the semifinal of Zuventures. He notes how this time was different.

“It’s really great to be working along side a real engineer. I’m excited for the future of Hungry Coug and other projects. I really hope this can illuminate the growing computer science program and its awesome instructors,” Thigpen said.

Vine App Discontinued By Twitter Incites Negative Responses From Users

This article originally appeared in ZU News.

On Oct. 27, the founders of the smartphone app, Vine, announced they would discontinue it within the next few months. This came in a Twitter announcement with no prior warning.

Vine is an app that debuted in 2012 after Twitter bought it for $30 million. Its premise was simple: to make a six-second video that played on an endless loop. Not many people had heard of it when it started, but it quickly gathered millions of users and viewers- according to an article by tech company The Verge.

Like many other social media apps today, Vine appealed to young people more than any other age group. From infamous videos like “Damn Daniel… back at it again with the white Vans” to “It is Wednesday, my dudes (insert terrible laugh),” teenagers fueled the Vine frenzy.

One avid Vine user was APU freshman computer science major Jonathan Davis. Although Davis only ever created and shared three vines on the app, he spent countless hours on it for fun.

“I think it’s very dumb. Vine is one of the single greatest things that was created,” Davis said. “It’s not a smart move on them. It’s very sad.”

Freshman psychology major Hailey Frey also lamented the change.

“I love Vine and I’m very sad Twitter decided to get rid of it,” said Frey. “I will really miss posting my daily vines. Vine made my life better.”

No longer will kids get to turn something embarrassing their friends said or did into an infinite six-second loop of humor. No longer will society be able to sit and watch Channing Tatum say “My name Jeff” over and over without having to rewind the clip at all. No longer will anyone be able to share a simple six-second video that brightened the day with a friend who’s also had a hard week.

“I’ll be missing everything. Vine is like half of Twitter, and the other half of Twitter is basically irrelevant. Without Vine, there’s nothing really to look forward to,” Davis said.

Others, however, believe Twitter made the correct choice in letting go of an app that can no longer keep up.

“I think Twitter is right in dissolving Vine. It can’t compete with Snapchat and Instagram,” said Deborah Revenaugh, a freshman psychology major. “The concept was good, but it didn’t have anything to make it essential.”

Vine is being discontinued for a variety of reasons, though mainly because of the fact that it never really profited Twitter. Vine never advertised and the founders were against monetization. Unlike Twitter, it didn’t offer paid accounts or videos. The company also lost its original founders, creative director and another CEO in the past two years, according to The Verge.

For now, users of Vine will still be able to view and upload videos in the next couple of months.

In the Twitter announcement released on the website Medium, Twitter revealed “nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines and are going to do this the right way. You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made. You will be notified before we make any changes to the app or website.”

Twitter did not share in the announcement a hard date for when Vine would be officially shut down.

So for people who spent hours on Vine instead of doing homework or stayed up a few extra minutes to watch “Damn Daniel” a couple more times, don’t worry too much; it’s not over just yet.

"The Magnificent Seven" Is A Great Modern Western, But Not Quite Magnificent

This article originally appeared in ZU News.

Although Westerns have faded out of the box office, every few years a movie like “The Magnificent Seven” comes along to show that movies don’t have to be filled with special effects to be successful.

“The Magnificent Seven” is a remake of the 1960 classic with the same title. The characters, plot and setting were adapted but the premise remained the same: seven cowboys unite against an army to save a town.

The modern adaptation of the original screenplay was written by Richard Wenk and Nic Pizzolatto. It was directed by Antoine Fuqua and starred Denzel Washington, Chris Pratt and Ethan Hawke.

Set in the late 1800’s in a small mining town, “The Magnificent Seven” has a simple plot supported by strong characters. The villain Bartholomew Boque storms into town and demands for everyone to leave, offering them the choice of a fraction of what their property is worth or their deaths. He kills the only man who tries to stand up to him.

This man’s wife is brokenhearted and travels to a nearby town to find a bounty hunter. There she meets Sam Chisolm, played by Washington, a police officer who hunts down criminals. She convinces him to help her by offering him all the money she has.

Chisolm agrees and quickly recruits Josh Faraday, a man who can seemingly either talk or shoot his way out of any situation. They set off recruiting five more along the way— a legendary confederate general, a “redskin” bounty hunter, a Mexican outlaw, a Chinese knife thrower and a Native American rebel.

The seven return to the town where the woman is from. They take out the sheriff and his officers that have been bought by Boque. The town rejoices but many of them flee in order to avoid the real battle. Those that stay are mere farmers and the seven have a comically hard time trying to teach them to defend themselves.

As the climax approaches, each character is revealed with their own unique backstory. When the day comes, it’s an army of hundreds armed with a Gatling gun against a few dozen farmers and “The Magnificent Seven.”

Although it didn’t have a high production value, “The Magnificent Seven” was a great movie that bridged the decades of classic westerns with modern characters and audiences. It had a budget of $90,000,000 and made $34,703,397 the opening weekend in box office sales.

This is a movie to see on a date or with the family, although it is rated PG-13 for violence and some language. Perhaps the best western since “True Grit,” “The Magnificent Seven” is a must see for anyone who likes old style movies like “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” or any number of classic westerns with John Wayne.

Overall, I give “The Magnificent Seven” three out of four John Wallace heads. Through the strong characters played by Washington and Pratt, it is a great modern western, but not quite magnificent. For that, it would need a stronger plot and to be more like the original film. I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys westerns or classical films.