Arts
Archived Stories
Cornell Solar Decathletes Are An Inspiration for the Study of Architecture
October 21st, 2009Some statistics: Cornell has, ahem, the number one architecture program in the United States. The United States each year produces six billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions — which is, per capita, almost 200 times more than poorer countries in the world. Buildings represent 39 percent of those emissions. Let’s round that up to 40 percent. While turning off the lights in Rockefeller overnight is important, the energy saved by doing so is chump change compared to what could be wrought by the education of a well-trained and knowledgeable generation of builders and designers. Read More
Solar Decathlon in the Dark: Competition is Misconceived
October 21st, 2009Shock and disbelief were the only two feelings stronger than nausea when judges announced the results for architecture at the recent Solar Decathlon competition in Washington, D.C. After a two-year, Herculean effort, Cornell’s Solar Decathlon team (CUSD) had produced an innovative house of remarkable craftsmanship. Its peculiar form and materiality exerted an uncanny architectural magnetism, attracting the press and public and eliciting praise and pride from everyone involved. Read More
Using Bad Grammar is Literally the Worst Thing You Can Do
October 20th, 2009Here at Cornell, as at any other college campus or location where academics convene, we have sprinkled among our populace grammar snobs. You probably know the type. The guy who never ends sentences with prepositions; who cringes when people use the word “disconnect”; who distinguishes between “who” and “whom” in speech, even though it makes him sound pompous and weeny. Read More
Of Coffins and Kids: Omer Fast’s Documentary at the Johnson Museum
October 20th, 2009Starting this past Saturday, Level 2L of the Johnson museum is playing host to an unusual yet thought-provoking film installation. Looking Pretty for God, a documentary by Omer Fast, explores an unlikely relationship: a photo shoot and a funeral home. Fast, an Israeli filmmaker who recently won the 2009 Nationalgalerie Prize for Young Art, challenges conventional media’s portrayal of reality. Toying with the distinction between audio and visual media in Looking Pretty for God, Fast uses interviews with funeral home employees as a means to narrate footage of a photo shoot of children. At the Johnson until Jan. 24, this pseudo-documentary may not impress you at first, but its provocative motivation gradually becomes a fun puzzle to solve. Read More
Ghosts in the Graveyard
October 19th, 2009Califone came to Cornell Cinema Friday night with a new kind of ghost story. The Chicago-area band, headed by Tim Rutili, has been enjoying critical acclaim since their self-titled release in 1998. Their music combines folk, rock and pop with a distinctively experimental edge that can suck you in with the different angles and approaches to sound and song. Read More
Girls Just Want to Have Fun
October 19th, 2009They came from as close as Ithaca and as far as Osaka, Japan to perform. They drew fans that clearly capitalized on the show’s “all ages” policy to people who looked like they had been rocking for decades. However, the one element that brought Saturday night’s show together was a simple term that has been thrown around and redefined for generations: punk. The four bands on the bill represented an array of styles: pop-punk, gypsy-punk, electro-punk and the self-defined genre of “super-eccentric-pop-punk-cult-band-shonen-knife!” These bands transformed Appel Commons into a hot and sweaty rock club complete with moshing and screaming guitars for Fanclub Collective’s first show of the semester. Read More
Corpses, Mermaids and TeleTubbies: One-Acts at Risley
October 19th, 2009If you haven’t checked out Risley Theatre yet, you should. The perks? It’s free, it’s warm and you might just get to see a purple Teletubby go on a murderous rampage. Read More
Living All Our Days As Earth Days
October 16th, 2009In the latest Captain Planet effort, Earth Days is more like watching a screen saver on your computer of historical errors then a political statement. It’s not a bad film; it’s just lacking that “what we do next” phase. Directed by Robert Stone, the documentary serves more of a lesson then an actual movement towards environmental change. Read More
Life Without Lying Isn't Much Fun
October 16th, 2009Imagine what higher education would be like if human beings were incapable of willful deceit. No handing in late papers with the made-up excuse of a broken laptop, no assuring Mom on Parent’s Weekend that no — you’re not hung over — just tired from studying … This is the premise of Ricky Gervais’ (Ghost Town, the British Office) newest comedy The Invention of Lying, which is set in an alternate reality where lying has yet to be discovered. Read More
The Dangerous Space Between Book and Film
October 16th, 2009The only book that I have ever cried while reading is Jodi Piccoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. During the film adaptation of this novel, however, I could only glare at Cameron Diaz and wonder that they didn’t attempt to be a little more discreet in trying to gross as much money as possible — why would anyone cast Cameron in the role of an overprotective mother? I read about how she was super excited for the movie and loved how her part was so down to earth. She mentioned how she even wore her own jeans and Uggs in the movie. That’s great, really. But I liked her better in Charlie’s Angels. Read More