Remember being five and giggling about clumsy characters and silly scenes such as a vampire not seeing himself in the mirror while brushing his teeth, an orphan under a bed sheet trying to scare away a guest, or even a vampire chilling out with stoners before sucking their blood and perhaps inviting Alice Cooper to his house later that week?

Movies today bombard us with a full battery of visual, sound, and even psychological effects just to keep us “entertained” and in our seats for up to three hours. French director Michel Hazanavicius has proven that intensity is not necessary, even for Academy Award material. The Artist, the only silent movie I have seen besides some Charlie Chaplin films, declares its excellence in less than two hours. The movie is refreshing as it revels in simplicity and wittiness.

“Mother, Father, always you wrestle inside me, always you will.”

Melancholia opens with a series of breathtaking shots resembling four-dimensional-surrealist-painting scenes. The powerful prelude from the opera Tristan und Isolde directs the visual phenomena. Nothing comprehensible about the plot is given; we only know the movie is going to be intense.

Students staying on campus this summer should be happy that MIT is next to the lively city of Boston, Mass. and not Ithaca, N.Y. Here are some moderate-size, lower-cost venues that you should visit while you are still immune to p-sets.

Archiprix International is an exhibition of the best graduation projects from top architecture design programs around the world. The biennial event was founded in 2001 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, as an attempt to create a global context for architecture education, and Archiprix now has 1527 participating universities. This year, MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning is hosting Archiprix International 2011, from the end of May to beginning of June.

This is TV on the Radio, one of a kind: wind chimes attached to the guitar. Whistling and clapping. And a rotating siren light.

Suspicious smells, beanies, floral dresses, flannel shirts, and quite a lot of plaid surrounded me as I walked into Paradise Rock Club. The light-hearted venue was small, which meant that wherever I stood, I would actually see Dr. Dog as a group of musicians, rather than tiny 125-decibel-generating figments in the distance. It felt personal. The ticket was cheap. Such are the benefits of liking an obscure band.

Watch the trailer. I almost cried.

When I invited a friend to see the play with me, he asked me who R. Buckminster Fuller was. My response was, “He’s an architect, some kind of engineer … I think.”