Author Archives: bel66

Athletics and Academics

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This past Wednesday I attended the Rose Café, and the primary focus was on the life of a student athlete at Cornell. Silviu Tanasoiu, a coach for our men’s tennis team, gave a presentation on a specific past player of his that he felt illustrated just how difficult it is to go to a place like Cornell and be a student athlete. The player he talked about did many impressive things, and overcame many obstacles along the way, but that was not my main take away from the presentation.

I was very surprised about how much coach Tanasoiu knew and cared about this student. I had never really played sport competitively, and the last time I had was around six to seven years ago and even then it was nothing serious so to see a coach care this much about a player was a little shocking to me. My experiences when I played had just been interacting with the coaches at practices and games and them telling me how to improve, but after listening to coach Tanasoiu it became clear that they know everything about their players. What classes they take, how well they are doing in those classes, their living and friend situation, what they do over the summer, and even their job prospects, everything is known and the coaches and other administrative staff does their best to ensure the player’s success. I was so happy to hear this as too often I hear of players in the NCAA that abused by the system and tossed aside after they have finished playing for their schools.  Knowing players at our school are cared for and encouraged to succeed outside of athletics really put a smile on my face.

12 Angry Hypocrites

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This past Saturday I saw the film 12 Angry Men, for the Flora Rose House movie night. The film has a somewhat legendary status, being mentioned on countless greatest movie lists of all time. The movie follows a very simple premise, it is just twelve men in the deliberation room discussing the murder case they have been given. Juror number eight is the main character and opens the case up to serious discussion as everyone was ready to vote guilty on a whim except for him. The movie ends with juror number eight being able to convince everyone that there is reasonable doubt in the prosecution’s case, and led the jury to vote not guilty. The movie was quite entertaining, which was surprising to me as I normally don’t like older movies such as this one. The movie does have some inconsistencies though.

Normally I would not be so inclined to notice and criticize certain dialog of a movie, but in a film that holds itself in such a morally upright position I believe it must be picked at. One of the main messages of the film is that profiling people is never good practice. This message is consistent in the film, but only when it fits juror number eight’s narrative. His entire argument is based upon that fact that the defendant is being profiled, and may not be the killer and is being prosecuted simply because it is the easy thing to do. Juror eight and others in the not guilty camp also employ this idea when attacking juror number two, who is biased against the defendant because of how his son has treated him in the past. These points are consistent with the message except they seem to lose this moral high ground when picking the witnesses’ lives apart. The most glaring issue is when juror number nine “picks apart” the witness who was an old man. He seems to know exactly who this old man is based on his appearance and how he walks, which is even more petty when compared to the things that were attacked above. They throw out this entire witness’s testimony based on this, believing he only said what he said to feel important for once in his life.

They also speculate as to why the defense lawyer didn’t perform a more rigorous cross examination of the witnesses, and just assumed he did want to be there and was not fully invested in the case. Maybe the defense lawyer knew the options were limited knowing his client did in fact kill his father. This led to the side of juror number eight bringing so much speculation into the deliberation when looking at the witness and defendant testimonials as a way of giving the kid a “fair” trial, feeling as if he had to do the defendant’s lawyer’s job. The message is only consistent when it fits juror number eight’s narrative, and with this being such a morally upright movie, left me disappointed and weakened the film’s message.

Doing Reinaldo Arenas Justice

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This past Friday the movie Before Night Falls was screened, a biographical drama about the Cuban poet, novelist, and playwright Reinaldo Arenas. The film follows Reinaldo Arenas from the time he is a child to the end of his life at the end of the movie, and depicts the hardships and struggles he faced as both a homosexual man and a great writer in post-revolutionary Cuba. Reinaldo is first shown as being sympathetic to revolution, going to college to study agriculture, but eventually switched to studying literature. It was at this time he began to get recognized for his work, and won a few awards for his writing in college.  He began to explore his sexuality during his time in college and after, being openly gay as he began to gain more prominence as a writer being openly gay left him at odds with the Cuban government and was eventually arrested for “ideological deviation” and publishing work in a foreign country without the government’s consent. The rest of the film deals with his conflict with the Cuban government, and eventually leads him to the United States by the Mariel Boatlift. Shortly after he is diagnosed with AIDS and dies next to his close friend Lazaro.

The film has many themes, but the one that I wish to focus on is the theme of perseverance and his dedication to his work. Reinaldo after falling out of favor with the Cuban government goes to great lengths to get his work published as it is no longer an option to publish it in Cuba given his status. He publishes his work in foreign countries, having friends smuggle his manuscripts out of Cuba, knowing that he could be imprisoned for it. Even when in prison he wrote letters for the serial killers and enemies of the state he was with in the prison, gaining enough paper by doing this to write a manuscript, but his manuscript was discovered destroyed and he was again severely punished. Perhaps an even more outstanding feat than the last, he goes to the United Sates continues to write, speaking out against the Cuban Government, after being diagnosed with AIDS and with his health rapidly deteriorating. This movie does Reinaldo’s life justice by showing how dedicated he was to his work and his ideals, with there being even more examples of his incredible perseverance and utmost character.

What Happened to Family?

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What Happened to Monday? is a sci-fi dystopian action film that was screened this past Friday. The setting features a world a few decades into the future, and the main feature of world is that the government only allows one child per couple. This is due to the severe over population of the world and lack of resources because of this overpopulation. Couples with more than one children are forced to freeze their other offspring for reanimation at a later more prosperous date. The film starts with a grandfather harboring seven identical grandchildren, and devising a scheme to keep them from being frozen by staggering when they leave their residence. As adults, one of the siblings is caught after their existence is seemingly exposed, and one by one they are caught until the sibling Tuesday discovers that Monday had betrayed them to keep her way of life.

This movie deals with a variety of themes, some of which are more developed than others, and one that is visited at many points in the movie is the importance of family. The theme can be seen from the very beginning with the sibling’s grandfather, Terrence, dedicating his life maintaining the siblings’ safety. Doing things that are very hard for him, like cutting off the index finger tip of every child to maintain similarities in appearance, which made him sob, he was devastated he had to do something so horrible to them. Later in the film the siblings can be seen going to great lengths to find Monday after she did not come home, risking their lives at every turn to find her, and in the case of a few siblings giving their life to let the others survive. This theme is visited in a rather complex manner when Monday becomes pregnant with twins. Realizing she could not have children with the life she was living she struck a deal with the government to sell out the other siblings and lead them to their deaths. As to whether this was the proper course of action is up for debate, it both conflicts the theme and affirms it at the same time, being in somewhat hypocritical state. This undercuts one of the main messages of the movie, and leaves the viewer confused as to why the makers of the film opted to add the twist as it seems forced and against the main theme of the movie.

The Difficulties of Building Developement

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I attended the Rose Café this past Wednesday with Noah Demarest giving a presentation on his current projects and as well as providing some insight on the development of Ithaca over the past few years, and future changes that residents of the city should expect to see soon. His projects ranged from apartment buildings to the Cornell tennis facilities. One of the things I found more interesting about the presentation was how much time it takes to begin construction on a project. So many things need to be considered by the firm, first the client’s needs, such as the amount of livable square footage, outdoor features, the general architecture of the building, and many more details. This process alone can take months just to sort out all the details of what is expected by the clients. After this initial process is done they must take it to the city to see what can and cannot be done, then they must cycle back to client to change things and this process can go on for a while, months up to years in some cases. Noah talked about some of the more nuanced details of developing a property that can affect the value, such as putting the bottom floor of a building too low. A few inches vertically can be the difference of a floor being able to have tenants and being able to charge rent and leaving the space for only utilities. This and many other things must all be balanced to satisfy the client and the city. Overall the presentation by Noah was very informative, and provided valuable insight in the small-scale development in the city of Ithaca.

Forrest Gump: A Sea of Details

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I’ve seen Forrest Gump before so I knew the general outline of the plot going into the movie. When first watching the movie it truly feels like a marathon. It takes off in the Fifties when Forrest is a child, and how his friendship with Jenny begins at a very young age. Then the movie precedes to follow his incredible life, bouncing between his fingerprints on the major events of the latter half of the Twentieth Century. From teaching Elvis his iconic dance to alerting the Watergate Hotel to the infamous scandal that was the beginning of the end for the Nixon administration. This movie drives home how the most extraordinary people can arise from the most disadvantageous of positions.

The movie makes many political statements, portraying many controversial times in American history. The Vietnam war is one of the main plot arcs in the movie, focusing on the horror the war, but also life after the war for injured veterans through the character development of Lieutenant Dan. Another detail I noticed is how the movie goes about portraying some of the more famous people from the Nineteenth Century. The perspective of the movie is from Forrest’s so we often see his simple judgements of the men and women he meets over the course of the film, many of whom were very controversial figures, from the three United States Presidents to the political activist Abby Hoffman. His descriptions often refer to what he’s been told about them and not what he thinks, with most of his input coming from his initial impression of them when he met them, or how many people liked or disliked them. The film also flashes forward most of times directly after he meets one of them to either describe their assassination, or their fall from power. This often brings down these figures from their typical larger than life descriptions that many would associate them with today. The film is very detailed and intricate with a lot of things a first-time viewer can miss, and one that should be re watched again.

 

Friday Night Lights: A Shallow Puddle

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Friday Night Lights is a well-regarded movie, based on the book Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream. The movie follows a high school team from Odessa, Texas in 1988 who is prime position to win the state championship in football that year, and the adversity they went through along the way. The movie overall was solid, nothing innovative or special just a solid sports movie which in of itself makes it one of the better sports movies of all time which isn’t saying much. It was safe in its presentation of the material, but often I found myself desiring more from the movie.

The movie was very frustrating on many fronts, leaving a lot of undeveloped plot arcs, and just not taking some of the more interesting plot points further. One that comes to mind is the development of the character James “Boobie” Miles. Here is a boy that has such a promising future, an excellent athlete, one of the best in Texas, a future football scholarship to a D1 school, and it all gets derailed by a knee injury. This has the potential to be a driving point for the movie, an arc that can be focused on and have many complex themes that can add depth to the movie. Instead they threw the character arc to the wayside, and it was never really visited again outside of using it as an inspirational piece for the football team as they continue with their season. There are a few of these storylines that are tossed to the side, and these arcs would add the depth that the movie is lacking. This is a byproduct of the movies structure. Their entire season is squished into a two-hour runtime, and the final product feels fast paced and rushed. While the face paced nature is not all bad, more action and excitement are a few positives, the emotional depth in the plot is really lost. There is simply no screen time for those lines to develop so no real relationships with the characters or even the team can be made with the audience, so the emotional ending is a big miss in terms of what it set out to accomplish. Overall it was a solid movie, but it could have been a truly special movie if there was more focus on the plot arcs and characters they left undeveloped.