As someone who fancies himself a movie guy, I’d like to think I’m a pretty good judge of whether a movie is essentially good or bad. That’s not to say there can never be any gray area (see all M. Night Shyamalan movies since The Sixth Sense), but usually I can walk out of the theater with a pretty good idea of where — if the world were black and white — a particular movie might fall. And then I saw Wild Style.

In traditional sonnet form, there’s always a turn at the ninth line. At that moment in verse, the mood switches and the tone changes to reveal something. The Princess of Nebraska, more poetry than film, has that moment too. Wayne Wang’s newest independent film documents a young immigrant’s visit to San Francisco.

Briton Ridley Scott has directed some whoppers of American cinema over the years. Classics such as Alien and Blade Runner established him, and modern visual feasts like Black Hawk Down and Gladiator have cemented his impressive status. And, just to prove his mettle, Scott has ventured into the realm of human drama — of crafting films about characters that transcend flaws to overcome odds … even without shit blowing up in the background. See Thelma and Louise, Matchstick Men, American Gangster, and G.I. Jane (okay, so maybe some of those had an explosion or two). Scott’s name is synonymous with blockbusters that aren’t afraid to make the viewer think. He’s become so consistent that his skills have even rubbed off on his little bro, Tony.

Camera MenIt’s not infrequent for Cornellians watching Entourage or The O.C. to sigh longingly and wish that our fair University were located somewhere a bit more star-studded or sun-basked. But these dreamers can take heart in the fact that once, a long, long time ago, Ithaca was the center of the movie universe.

There’s a whole laundry list of songs from the late 1990s that I only associate with the movie Titanic. They have zero to do with the film, but the late-90’s techno craze coincided with the time period in which I learned what love truly was (Titanic taught me that). Every night for, like, I’d guesstimate about six months, I’d make sure I was in my room, listening to the radio. (Wow, times have changed — now my radio consumption consists only of Bay Area AM talk radio, and only when I want to set a romantic mood.) Every night at 9 p.m., I listened in for the Z95.7 top 9 at 9. Or was it top 10 at 10?

Ever dream of working in showbiz? Then talk to Gaye Hirsch ’84, Senior Vice President of Current Programming at the C.W. television network. She helped make movies for Tom Cruise’s production company, Cruise/Wagner and held a gig with HBO, before settling down to oversee shows like Gossip Girl and Smallville at the C.W. The Sun had the opportunity to sit down with Hirsch in Los Angeles this summer to talk about her path to show-business:

The Sun: So you’re a pretty big deal. Would you mind explaining what exactly your job entails?

We try to avoid keeping The Sun’s content inbred; it’s often seen as both self-promotional and perhaps a conflict of interest.

That said, there are times when you have to make allowances; when a former editor is exemplary and interesting enough, that, though he or she may claim that “they majored in the Sun,” everything else he or she has done far surpasses it.

Howard Rodman ’71 is one such dude. He’d be the first to claim that he’s not quite the “Hollywood Insider,” and he may be right: much of his work, though celebrated, happens to be “unproducable or unpublishable” — a common trope of his.

A couple of weeks ago I watched the Colin Farrell film In Bruges for the first time. The movie (which debuted at Sundance last January) tells the story of the depressed and ADD-addled Ray (Farrell), a neophyte assassin who has bungled his first assignment and is now hiding in the Belgian city of Bruges with his more experienced (and tranquil) colleague Ken (Brendan Gleeson).

In Bruges is great for a number of reasons — it’s smart, it’s got great acting and it’s filled with funny British accents. But the thing I enjoyed most about the film was how it took a rather standard premise — two assassins on the run flirting with death — and turned it into a vehicle for serious reflection.

This article was originally published online on Jul 29.

There is a curious breed of person for whom Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, which opened Wednesday, is new material. Bleary-eyed, paranoid, misguidedly noble, this breed has halted all Potterland talk over the past few months, perhaps with a slight twitch: “I’m waiting for the movie to come out.” It is for him that the traditional review would be necessary, but then he’d probably never read this anyway, out of a desire to avoid “spoilers.” A Sisyphean task, usually, but I think he’s up to it — illiteracy has its advantages.