Sound was introduced to cinema in the 1920s, issuing in the era of "talkies." Color arrived a decade later, memorialized when Dorothy stepped into Oz and exclaimed, "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." And now, film director Peter Jackson is hoping to make high frame rates the next revolution in filmmaking.
At a Dartmouth Film Society meeting last week, we were asked to name classic American films. My first thoughts were of those famous, old masterpieces "Citizen Kane" and "Gone With the Wind." Then I thought of movies featuring a pure, historic American setting like the gritty, flat brush of Texan oil prairies in "There Will be Blood." People brought up such iconic, innovative movies as "The Graduate" and "Annie Hall." The difficulty that we had in generalizing a definition of classic American cinema stems from the complexity of the word "American" itself. The word "American" conjures an eclectic mix of stereotypes.
Remember the Pixar films of yore? Those sweet, innocent, simple productions free of convoluted plots and overly elaborate settings?
I arrived on campus a short three weeks ago, and I have already been inundated with an overwhelming amount of pre-med advice, lectures, shadowing opportunities and potential research positions.