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Cornell in Tinsel Town: Future Filmmakers

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The future of Cornell’s film legacy rests in the hands of its current film students. Some of their current short films have wound up on YouTube. Let’s take a look at a couple:

Library Limbo: Animated by artists in Film 325 in summer 2006, this short video was done in the style of old-school cartoons of the 1920s and ’30s. McGraw Clocktower, with a huge smile on its face, bobs up and down; the doors of Uris Library blink open and shut; someone in the cocktail lounge sneaks a sip from his flask. Basically a pretty accurate representation of the typical day at the library, right? Seriously though, this cartoon is pretty awesome.

The Cornell Connection: Drew Brody '94 and David Greenman '00

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The Sun: So, you two are working with Cornell in Hollywood. How’d you guys get involved with that?

David Greenman: The program is a subsidiary of the Cornell Club in Los Angeles, and it’s been built up a lot in the last couple of years thanks to Nancy Mills and Nick Muccini [from the Cornell Club in LA’s Board of Directors] and other alumni. They’ve really created a great community out there that gets better every year.

Last year, Drew and I happened to be at an event, and Nancy Mills said to me, “How would you feel about running an internship program for us?” and I said,“Oh, OK.”

She said, “I think Drew Brody’s interested as well, and I said, “OK.”

She said, “Here’s the paper work.”

“Great.”

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Beat of the Week

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It’s around this time of the year that I start to truly, deeply despise Ithaca. I used to love snow; nothing was better than waking up in the morning and seeing the ground blanketed in cold, white fluff. Now snow means I’m going to be cold and wet from head to toe by the time I’ve completed my 15-minute trek up the hill to reach my 10:10. And this seems to be the story every other day. That’s it; I’m transferring to somewhere warm. Real warm. University of Ecuador?

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Strange but True

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A film that’s both intimate in its presentation and ambitious in its topical scope, Strange Culture starts by addressing a private tragedy and ends with fireworks, challenging our government’s assault on civil liberties. Directed by Cornell’s own A.D. White Professor-at-Large Lynn Hershman-Leeson, the film applies both dramatic and documentary-style narrative structures to tell the story of SUNY Buffalo Professor Steve Kurtz and his battle with the United States Department of Justice.

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Test Spin: The Helio Sequence

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The beginning of “Broken Afternoon,” off of The Helio Sequence’s Keep Your Eyes Ahead, is sort of a microcosm of the rest of the album. The song opens with atmospheric hums and drones familiar to electronic music, but is shortly thereafter interrupted by the incongruous strumming of an acoustic guitar and … wait, is that Bob Dylan singing?

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FIVES (2-21-08)

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FIVES” is the brand-new Daze feature that gives Sun writers the chance to rattle off lists, observations, ruminations, musings, or rankings on anything and everything having to do culture in Ithaca or at large, all for your reading pleasure. Enjoy.

Cornell will be treated to a smorgasbord of musicians, big and small, over the course of the semester. Here are five acts to watch out for in the coming months:

Taj Mahal (Tonight, State Theater):
Blues, Reggae, Cajun, Bluegrass, African — the broad range of influences this Grammy Award-winning performer boasts makes my head spin — and also makes me wish I had tickets to see him.

Super Furry Animals (Tomorrow, 2/22, No Radio Records)

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British Sea Power Test Spin

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The sign of a good band is consistency. The sign of a great one is evolution. Where does British Sea Power fall? Well, somewhere in between.
Their progression from post-punk-esque to airy indie-rock takes a new turn as the English quartet goes bigger, louder and higher. In much the same way as The Arcade Fire’s symphonic ambitions shaped Neon Bible, so do the same epic aspirations drive Rock Music, and the result is pretty damn listenable. Vocals echo, chimes ring and multiple guitars pound out riffs; it all meshes into something that fits somewhere between The Cure and The Postal Service, certainly a change from their days riffing Joy Division.

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Beat of the Week (2-12-2008)

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Super Tuesday was the first big leap into the election fray, and things should cool down for a little while in the national arena before the next round of important primaries hits in March. However, if you were planning on enjoying a few weeks of peace and quiet, think again.

Cornell’s Student Assembly will be holding their elections in two weeks time, so don’t be surprised when someone on Ho Plaza hands you a piece of candy and a quarter card that says “STEVE SUPPORTS SUSTAINABILITY. VOTE FOR STEVE!!!” Oy.

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Rare Beauty

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First thing’s first. What is a “diving bell” exactly? Maybe it’s just me, but until I sat down to write this review, I had absolutely no idea what the words meant. Time to do some research.

Apparently, a diving bell is “an open-bottomed chamber supplied with compressed air, in which a person can be let down under water,” (Thanks for lookin’ out, dictionary.com). More specifically, in the context of the new film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, directed by Julian Schnabel, the apparatus in question is Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), one-time editor of the French magazine Elle, who in 1995 suffered a debilitating stroke that left him almost completely paralyzed.

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iWars

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The interconnectivity that the digital age has made possible is one of the most significant events in modern history. The Internet has allowed for the transfer of unheard of volumes of data. This ability to trade information with great expedience has allowed for unprecedented economic growth. Truth be told, though, everything I’ve just been saying is soooo 1990s. It takes a lot more to impress people nowadays. Sure, thanks to the World Wide Web, it’s possible to scour Juicy Campus for gossip (and thank the heavens, because without it how would we ever know who the “fugliest guys and girls at Cornell” are — truly classy stuff, no?). But so what?