Ryan Poladian ’14

I’m a senior Philosophy major from sunny Southern California. When I’m not in class, playing volleyball, or thinking about deep philosophical questions like, “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” you can usually find me watching anything from a 1940s Noir to the newest animated Disney movie.

My appreciation for films was instilled in me at a young age. Many weekends, from age six to thirteen, I would watch old John Wayne and Clint Eastwood westerns with my dad. My favorite films and shows are the ones that I cannot stop thinking about even long after the credits have rolled, but I’m also partial to the ones that he cannot stop laughing about either. While I have great appreciation for films like the raw historical depictions of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, I also love to sit back and enjoy more casual films such as the comedic stylings of Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

I am writing my senior thesis on intellectual property rights, focusing in particular on the copyright law that protects films and television shows. I plan to attend law school after graduating from Princeton. While my career aspirations lay in the legal field, I nonetheless greatly admire the creativity and style of directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Billy Wilder. If I were to be a director I would like my style to resemble that of the great Christopher Nolan or J.J. Abrams, but I readily acknowledge that I would likely produce films of the emotional intricacy and storyline complexity of Michael Bay.

My favorite films are an eclectic group: Pulp Fiction, Titanic, Atonement, Amélie, and The Matrix. My range of television interests varies from the classic comedy The Simpsons and more recently the hilarious Archer all the way to the visceral and thrilling Breaking Bad and the brilliant Sir Arthur Conan Doyle adaptation, BBC’s Sherlock.

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A Film and Television Review