Cornell in the Movies

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

I saw "Water for Elephants" on Saturday.  Not a great movie but lots of mentions of Cornell - the hero went to the CU Vet School.

Nothing filmed in Ithaca, however.  The one scene that showed any of Cornell was a brief flash of Morrill Hall that was CGA'ed in.

Also lots of smarmy mentions of the Ivy League and ivy leaguers.  Interesting because the movie was set in 1931 and the term Ivy League wasn't even coined until 1933-1935.  Hollywood?  Historical accuracy?  Yeah right.

At least they knew Cornell was an Ivy League school.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Deleted.

[Trotsky]

Re-purposing the thread, off the top of my head, movies that Cornell is mentioned in:

+ Love Story (duh)
+ Citizen Kane (one of the schools Kane was thrown out of)
+ Dirty Dancing (the asshole with the Ayn Rand book went to Cornell)
+ that terrible movie where Charlie Sheen winds up on a South American radio telescope (the astronomer wears a CU t-shirt, but it's not red)

I'm sure there are dozens of others.

[Trotsky]

Titanic (a good version, in 1953), at 7:21.

[Beeeej]

A good start:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cornell_University_alumni#Fictional_Cornellians

[billhoward]

The book was okay. Water for Elephants kind of ambled along and you weren't in a hurry to finish in one sitting; I think one of my wife's book club books that I actually read. A lot of the other book club books fall into the category of women-leading-screwed-up-lives-and-writing-about-it. Men's books are much more realistic: Cop becomes millionaire writing gaming software, decides to remain a police detective, owns a Porsche (in Minneapolis - good location for four-season driving), has gorgeous surgeon / girlfriend / wife, solves every crime, wife/GF almost gets killed every other book. At least we got a definitive Lucas Davenport's 100 Best Songs of the Rock Era out of Broken Prey http://www.johnsandford.org/prey16x1.html

[Trotsky]

wife/GF almost gets killed every other book

There is Realism, and then there is Wish Fulfillment.

Beeeej: trust you to spoil the thread.  Jerk.

Adding from your list, which is boring and incomplete, but I'm not drawing further parallels:

+ Altered States (apparently, though I swear he was from NYU, and later he's in Boston)
+ Dark City (which I haven't seen, no, it's not *that* Dark City)
+ The Lost Weekend (drunks seems to be connected with our Alma Mater)
+ Prince of Tides *and* Say Anything *and* The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (seriously?  ew.)

Also:

+ the sort-of-true-story comedy about the ADM exec who was a Cornell alum

[Josh '99]

Some scenes in GoldenEye were filmed at the Arecibo Observatory, though it was never identified as such.

[RichH]

Some scenes in GoldenEye were filmed at the Arecibo Observatory, though it was never identified as such.

As well as all these, most prominently, Contact.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

Some scenes in GoldenEye were filmed at the Arecibo Observatory, though it was never identified as such.

Although they said it was Cuba.

[Trotsky]

Interesting local news quickie on the early Ithaca film industry.  Pearl White sounds like a hoot (later she would be the perpetually imperiled Pauline).  "Lionel Barrymore, great uncle of Drew Barrymore" ... cringeworthy.  Gotta keep it current For The Kids.

[Roy 82]

Some scenes in GoldenEye were filmed at the Arecibo Observatory, though it was never identified as such.

As well as all these, most prominently, Contact.

Sorry, it will shortly be announced that the Arecibo Observatory is not affiliated with Cornell. PM me for details* (I always wanted to be able to do that).

*please don't actually PM me.

[Roy 82]

Some scenes in GoldenEye were filmed at the Arecibo Observatory, though it was never identified as such.

As well as all these, most prominently, Contact.

Sorry, it will shortly be announced that the Arecibo Observatory is not affiliated with Cornell. PM me for details* (I always wanted to be able to do that).

*please don't actually PM me.

It's gone public:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/05/arecibo_set_for_shakeup.html
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/new-consortium-to-run-arecibo-ob.html?ref=hp

[RichH]

Some scenes in GoldenEye were filmed at the Arecibo Observatory, though it was never identified as such.

As well as all these, most prominently, Contact.

Sorry, it will shortly be announced that the Arecibo Observatory is not affiliated with Cornell. PM me for details* (I always wanted to be able to do that).

*please don't actually PM me.

It's gone public:
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2011/05/arecibo_set_for_shakeup.html
http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2011/05/new-consortium-to-run-arecibo-ob.html?ref=hp

The new management is SRI International. SRI = Stanford Research Institute. Though it's been separate from Stanford University since 1970, the ties are probably still strong.  They borrowed heavily from Cornell's faculty at their founding (7 of the original 15 faculty members were from Cornell, plus their first president, David Starr Jordan, was a CU alumnus) and word was that a 2nd raid of the CU Physics dept was perpetrated a few decades later.  They beat Cornell 56-6 in their centennial football game in 1991.

And now they're nabbing our awesome telescope?

Goddammit.

[phillysportsfan]

And they destroyed us in the NCAA tournament in basketball in 2008