Science on Screen with Andrew Cohen

Speaker: Andrew Cohen, Boston University

When: April 5, 2010 (Mon), 07:00PM to 10:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: CLDG

As part of its monthly Science on Screen series, the Coolidge Corner Theatre will present Ang Lee’s internationally acclaimed martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon paired with a talk by Boston University physics professor Andrew Cohen on Monday, April 5 at 7 pm.

Winner of four Academy Awards (Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, Best Score), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is Lee’s homage to the Hong Kong wuxia films that fueled his love of movies as a youth in Taiwan. Set against the gorgeous landscapes of nineteenth-century China, the film combines exhilarating martial arts and action sequences choreographed by the great Yuen Wo Ping with a story that combines romance, intrigue, and dramatic soul. The Chinese-language film features a superior pan-Asian cast that includes Chow Yun Fat (dubbed the coolest actor in the world by the Los Angeles Times, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chen Pei-pei (an iconic martial arts star of the ‘60s and ‘70s) and Chang Chen. This world classic demands to be seen on the giant screen!

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—in which combatants soar over rooftops, run up walls, step on water, and even fight in the treetops of a bamboo forest—keeps audiences spellbound because of how it toys with conventional physics. Before the screening, Boston University physics professor Andrew Cohen explores some of the ways in which the film bends the laws of physics and why this can enhance the movie’s impact.

Andrew Cohen is professor of physics at Boston University, where he created “Cinema Physica,” an introductory course for non-science majors which uses popular films to introduce students to the principles of quantitative scientific reasoning. A former Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, a fellow of the American Physical Society, and president of the Aspen Center for Physics, Professor Cohen conducts research on the physics of elementary particles.

With Science on Screen, the Coolidge presents big-screen events, sometimes features and sometimes documentaries, with a scientific premise or angle, paired with introductions by notable scientists from a related field. Launched in 2005, this monthly series is one of the Coolidge’s most popular programs and is co-presented by the Museum of Science, Boston and New Scientist magazine.

Tickets are $7.75 students and Museum of Science members and $9.75 general admission. Coolidge Corner Theatre members get free admission. Tickets available at www.coolidge.org or at the Coolidge box office, 290 Harvard Street, Brookline. For more information: www.coolidge.org/science.