2019’s Biggest Trends
January 29, 2020
2019 was a stirring year with numerous memorable trends that impacted the year. From Hydro Flask water bottles to “hitting the woah,” gen z rapidly spread trends through memes, short clips, and articles. 2019 brought about new dance moves, popularizing as much as the Whip and Nae nae. Out of t...
The Big Money in the Holiday Season
Brendan Bellingham, Staff Writer
January 28, 2020
The holiday season is a time to visit family and spread cheer for all to hear. This time is also met with a break from work and school in favor of the finer things in life. The religious ties to this time of year and that family togetherness means that the sentimental value for December is high for ...
A Movie Review of Knives Out
Aubrey Harrell, Editorial Board
January 24, 2020
While it can sometimes be a challenge for mystery genre films to keep an audience enraptured and speculating up until the very end of the film without any giveaways as to how the plot will be resolved, recent film Knives Out, produced by Rian Johnson, does not face such a problem. The murder mystery is a captivati...
More Recognition for Foreign Films by the Academy
Aubrey Harrell, Editorial Board
January 24, 2020
As film awards season approaches, It’s become glaringly obvious that foreign films have begun to garner more attention and well-deserved recognition as of late. Films like Parasite, The Farewell, Pain and Glory, and Portrait of a Lady on Fire have become common titles to hear come up in conversati...
Getting Back into the Swing of Things
Haley Longfellow, Staff Writer
January 24, 2020
In an ideal world, a long, rejuvenating break would bring about a strong urge to return to the security of daily routines. With the mind aching for the comforts of reality, an individual would quickly rejoin society and devotedly immerse themselves in work, school, or any other organized efforts. ...
Student veganism: balancing change and comfort
Ashleigh Tain, Editor-in-Chief
January 24, 2020
In the past weeks, Oakton’s AP Environmental Science class has been studying the waste unit by embracing action and challenges. After tracking and measuring daily waste for a week, they were assigned an optional challenge of pursuing veganism. A majority of her students pursued this, some being Aditi ...
Non-compromising habits to decrease your carbon footprint
Ashleigh Tain, Editor-in-Chief
January 24, 2020
While more ethical and carbon resistant lifestyles have been emerging, it has become increasingly evident that we as Earth's humans need to take responsibility and change our lifestyles to ensure the integrity of our future. I've often been inspired by several social media influencers and emerging corpor...
Is Disney+ worth it?
Katie Le, Staff Writer
January 17, 2020
Disney+ is an online streaming service owned and run by The Walt Disney company. Like Netflix, it requires a subscription fee of $7 a month, which is less than Netflix and similar streaming services. Disney+ launched on November 12 but crashed the same day, although they did gain approximately 10 milli...
OPUS’s Strides
Sahithi Jammulamadaka, Editor-in-Chief
January 14, 2020
As you walk through the halls, you can see the colorful and decorative posters on the walls advertising OPUS’s annual arts and literary magazine. The magazine displays poetry, photography, art, and short stories done by students at Oakton and are submitted to a panel of judges who then give a...
Greta Gerwig’s Little Women promotes Women Empowerment
Holland Cogan, Staff Writer
January 14, 2020
Empowerment usually isn’t the word that comes to mind when the 1800s and women are put together into a sentence, however, in 2019 that changed when Greta Gerwig wrote the screenplay and directed the beloved and timeless story Little Women. Actresses Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, and Florence Pugh were t...
The Golden Globes 2020 begins with controversy
Lindsay Greenspan, Staff Writer
January 14, 2020
Awards season has begun, and once again, the controversy has already started. On Sunday, January 5, the 77th Golden Globe Awards were presented in Beverly Hills, California. These prestigious awards, honoring the best in television and film were not without controversy, regarding both the winners of t...
“The Circle” Reveals That Appearances Can Be Deceiving
Olivia Garrone, Editorial Board
January 14, 2020
The new Netflix reality competition series, The Circle, manages to entertain while highlighting the deception of appearances on social media at the same time. The goal of the show is for the contestants to be perceived as the most likable and real on a fake social media platform in order to avoid being...
