“I live and breathe movies, so there’s no better place for me to go on a weekend than the Stanford Theatre. Their selection of films—vintage Hollywood masterpieces from the ’20s to the ’50s—is consistently on point. Whether going for the double feature ($7 for 2 movies!), alone or with friends, I feel a surge of deep satisfaction going to this special home away from home. I live for the nights when I discover some Howard Hawks screwball comedy crammed with killer leopards and crazy paleontologists, or re-watch one of my favorite sweat-inducing Hitchcock thrillers. Whenever I get stressed or over-burdened, I can always count on the Stanford to provide me comfort, knowledge, and great memories.”
“Stanford is always a humbling experience. For me, it’s both an overwhelming and an exciting sensation to be constantly reminded of how little I know about the world. The learning process, to me, is a push-pull struggle: a demolishing of a set perception, and a grappling with a new one. There’s always some new entry-point to make me realize something I hadn’t thought of before. It’s there when I make a new discovery among the Media & Microtext Center’s 40,000-plus films. It’s there when an exciting English, art history, or AAAS class gets me to grapple with a reality I never engaged with. It’s there when I have convos with good friends that become longer and more profound than initially expected. These all help me forge my own complex sense of truth in an often hard and bitter world.”
Carlos Valladares, ’18, double-majoring in Film & Media Studies and American Studies (focus on 20th century American art)
Carlos lives in Pasadena, CA. Grew up in Los Angeles, CA and Phoenix, AZ. Carlos is currently Managing Editor of Arts & Life for the Stanford Daily and the Film/TV Editor for the Stanford Arts Review; he writes film, music, and arts criticism for both. He also works as a Desk Assistant at the Media & Microtext Center in the basement of Green Library; come on down, if you want some movie recommendations, or just to watch a movie!
Quick list of some of Carlos’s favorite movies: “A Hard Day’s Night” (the Beatles movie; favorite of all time), “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg”, “City Lights” by Charlie Chaplin, “Spirited Away”, “Silver Linings Playbook”, “Boyhood”, “A Woman Under the Influence” by John Cassavetes, the 50s Looney Tunes shorts by Chuck Jones, “Killer of Sheep”, and “The Graduate”.
Photographed on University Avenue in Palo Alto on June 7, 2016.
