In 2009, People Magazine selected and photographed around two dozen celebrities as the “World’s Most Beautiful People.” Maxim Magazine chose 100 hot women and published revealing pictures of a selected few. In the same realm, FHM cherry-picked the “100 Sexiest Women in the World.”

But no one did it quite like Andy Warhol, the most famous and revolutionary American pop artist of the late 20th century.

In 1957, reacting to the devastating potential of Soviet missile armament, President Eisenhower pressured Congress to pass The National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which funded curriculum changes in public schools, particularly in math and the sciences.

According to film-collector and restorer Skip Elsheimer the increasing resources allocated by the NDEA, the fearful demand of Americans for educational videos and the abundance of film equipment left over after World War II encouraged small, goal-oriented groups to produce highly focused educational films.

There are lots of reasons to be excited about the silver screen right now in Ithaca: Cornell Cinema is firing on all cylinders; cutsie romantic comedies and more sophisticated offerings are available at Cinemapolis; dark thinkers, bloody battles and uplifting idiotics are rotating with astonishing speed through Regal Cinemas. Certain constraints however limit us from jetting off to every movie that perks our interest, and most of the time those choices can be made based on the actors — how many Brad Pitts and Johnny Depps, Julia Roberts and Natalie Portmans does it have? How many does it have to be?

The horror … the horror. Lo and behold, famed director and screenwriter Francis Ford Coppola has laid an egg: he calls it Tetro. Carrying the tagline "Every family has a secret," Tetro is Coppola’s second "amateur-again" film after Youth Without Youth. Tetro is Coppola giving himself second chance, his personal spurning of Hollywood and its fakeness, unoriginality … one could give Hollywood a bad name a thousand times over. At age 70, Coppola has left living room legends Apocalypse Now and The Godfather trilogy behind him, and has purposely regressed his budget with the intention of rediscovering what it is that made him apply to L.A. film school.

Dear starry eyed-freshman:

Do you like music? Movies? How about burlesque dancers strutting their stuff on the Slope? If so, you’re in luck. The Pussycat Dolls may not strike Ithaca every year (thank god), but there’s plenty else to keep your eyes, ears and mind entertained on campus and around town. To get a taste, check out these review excerpts from last year — everyone from Girl Talk to Junot Diaz to Don Giovanni was in town, and we were there to get you the story. Appetite sufficiently whetted? Get ready for the likes of Ani DiFranco and Built to Spill this fall, and check out the concert on the Arts Quad on Aug. 29 (artist to be announced). It’ll be the start of another great year in Ithaca arts culture. And homework and tests and all that other boring stuff. Whatever.

So. You’re in Ithaca. You’re in college. What to do now?

In the aftermath of the great Uncle Tupelo schism of ’94, I’ve always been a Wilco partisan. From A.M. to Sky Blue Sky, the band – in all of its various iterations and lineups – has produced some of the best music of the past 15 years (or of any years, for that matter). From traditional alt-country – if that isn’t a contradiction in terms – to the “sculpted soundscapes” of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, the band manages to stay true to its roots while reaching far beyond them.

“It’s not like any other conference you’ve been to,” promised Prof. Lisa Patti, film, speaking of the film conference held at Cornell this past Friday and Saturday. Indeed, the unique structure of the conference was readily apparent after merely a brief glance at the program of events — unlike other conferences that focus on a keynote speech and subsequent panel discussions, this conference had no keynote speech and was structured around a series of film viewings and group discussions which — though led by a discussion chair and series of panelists — included heavy audience participation.

This week Cornell Cinema will be screening Medicine for Melancholy, a film by relative newcomer Barry Jenkins. An IFC production, the movie follows Micah and Jo — two 20-somethings in San Francisco — after their one night stand (which by the end of the movie is more like a one-night-and-one day-stand). As they day goes on, they explore the city together, debating and discussing issues of race, gender, identity, gentrification and art.

After nearly four semesters at Cornell, I’m finally getting going on the whole picking the major thing. I’ve engaged in the requisite flirtation in a variety of subjects, dipping my wick in everything humanities, from film to government to Africana studies. And now I’ll finally settle down, albeit carrying the scars and diseases of my academic promiscuity, with what I thought would be my major all along — English.