A few excerpts:

Hunting For Beauty

I hop out of my ’94 Chrysler and climb a fire escape to the side entrance of an apartment. I pick the lock and, as the door opens, I am engulfed by the noise of a rhinoceros or some other horned mammal devouring a transmission tower. No, not an alarm—something else. Tentatively, I enter the apartment. The place is a pigsty: books, vinyls, and half-finished sketches scattered across the floor, but most conspicuous of all is the lone piece of furniture—a coffee table—because it is fused together with jujubes. My ears are still ringing when my shirt becomes damp—the climate is tropical here! Appearing from this wilderness, also known as 66 Madison Street in Toronto, are its residents, Ferdowsi and Paul, with drumsticks in hand banging on everything in sight. They both have giant grins and speak garrulously but I cannot hear their voices over the clamour. I look confused. Ferdowsi turns to me and I hear the tail end of his speech: “Get flash, get flash! It’s time to rock out!”

Biology Lab

Introduction

For this experiment, we are trying to answer the question of how soil type affects the growth of seeds. This is of interest to us because of our deep curiosity of soils and someday we may wish to grow a vegetable garden. We chose to compare pea and bean seeds. We chose these seeds because they were the freshest and least likely to be duds. We have little experience with soil and growing plant matter in general. Our hypothesis is that the richer and more nutritious the soil, the better the seeds will grow. If our hypothesis proves correct, then seeds will germinate faster and in greater quantity in Promix; then vermiculite and perlite; and the least amount of success will be met in the insalubrious sand and paper towel. Further, we believe that both seed type will germinate with similar success or failure. The null hypothesis is that the soil-type or condition will have no bearing on whether a seed germinates—or that the seeds will have greater germination with fewer nutrients. Therefore, the seeds will germinate faster and in greater quantity in the paper towels and sands and less so in the vermiculite, perlite and Promix.

La Nouvelle Vague

An auteur, or author, takes complete creative ownership over the filmmaking process, and makes a series of films with a distinct, recognizable style that is original to the auteur. Jean-Luc Godard claims that “there are no works, there are only auteurs” (Bordwell 487). The auteur develops a string of works that could be called a “body of criticism”—works that are not identical but clearly express the author’s voice coherently and continuously from film to film (Staples 4).
David Lynch is an example of a contemporary North American filmmaker who is considered an auteur. Lynch has created a body of works expressing similar themes and executing a similar and uniquely Lynchian technique. Films that are distinctly Lynchian are noted for their unique and chilling use of ambient sound, the use of symbolism in the mise en scene (everything seen on the screen), the use of parallel universes or extended dream sequences, and the sense of a prevailing dark force that governs an industrial and desolate world.
Lynch took inspiration from Truffaut who further developed and pushed the auteur movement in a 1954 Cahiers du Cinema article “Les Politiques de Auteurs,” which has subsequently been hailed as a call to arms against the cinema of quality (Staples 1). Truffaut demanded filmmakers exercise a distinct creative vision with personalized trademarks that carry over from film to film (Staples 1). Andre Bazin, co-founder of Cahiers du Cinema, expanded on auteur theory claiming that traditonional cinema of quality films have an auteur also—but more importantly traditional films have a subject which defines a piece of work (Staples 3). Truffaut’s auteur theory, Bazin argued, removed the subject entirely by defining the work as the auteur. Eliminating the subject might create a cult of personality of the auteur, and this is a necessary risk because the goal of auteur theory is to create a personalized art piece where the “distinction between author and director loses all meaning. The auteur writes with the camera as a writer writes with a pen” (Marie 32-33) Therefore, everything in a scene, the mise en scene, including the voice of the actor, is essentially the voice of the auteur. Moreover, the auteur’s voice should speak to the audience. Films should connect the audience with the auteur, as if the two were experiencing an intimate conversation (Monaco 8). This is requiring more from the viewer, asking them to participate in the filmmaking process. Auteur theory worked against the norm of the cinema of quality, where the studio would override the authority of the director—and the filmmaking process was not truly unique to the filmmaker. Truffaut did not “believe in the peaceful co-existence of the Tradition [cinema] of Quality and a cinema of auteurs ” (Staples 2). Eventually, the critics had the opportunity to put auteur theory to the test and compete with the cinema of quality.