Word: abstract
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some of Bakshi's spectacle is truly opulent. In the opening sequence, the forging of the evil ring that Frodo must return and destroy is an abstract symphony of blacks and blazing reds. The ring-wraiths who pursue Frodo are inky phantoms on horseback and lurching deformities on foot. The action flows across backdrops that are both eye-boggling and wildly diverse. Bakshi has suggested the range and variety of Middle-earth geography by displaying a scrapbook filled with conflicting styles. Those who enjoy humming the scenery can forget the plot and go on a spree of influence hunting...
...made aloud. No one, including the Piloboli themselves, could say exactly what it was that the troupe was doing when it began experimenting in 1971. It certainly was not dance, say the purists, meaning that it was not classical ballet or any recognizable modern dance. Was it acrobatic slapstick, abstract-expressionist mime, some kind of muscular, head-over-heels tableau vivant? The startling truth was that Pilobolus entangled human bodies in ways that no one had ever seen before. When the group performed on Broadway last year for four weeks of near sold-out performances, Critic Arlene Croce admitted that...
...movie, therefore, is not just an innocent and harmless depiction of Billy Hayes' transformation "into an Everyman-type hero coping with the erosion of his identity in a nether world of sadism, greed, and madness." As abstract as Mr. Contrer as makes it sound, this world is one where "sadism, greed, and madness" are clearly portrayed as the intrinsic characteristics of a country and its people. "Midnight Express" may be a compelling story of personal struggle, but this comes at the expense of dehumanizing an entire nation...
Since Pakula's recent films have dealt with little guys battling huge conspiracies of money and power, it is easy to see why he was drawn to Clark's script. What is missing here is the director's usual skill at transforming abstract evil into a palpable and frightening force. Perhaps Pakula has been lulled by Horseman's bucolic landscapes, because his characteristic tension is missing here. In this director's best movies, he arouses terror and paranoia by making it impossible to separate heroes from villains until the end. This time around the cast...
...SUBMERGENCE of identity, its apparent destruction, and its final reassertion will remain, for most of us, abstract concepts to mull over at our will and convenience. As we flounder from crisis to crisis during our youth, many of us imagine ourselves trapped by the self-images we have built up; we then seek physical escape, metamorphosis, new friends and intimates--anything, in short, that promises freedom from this internalized jail cell. But we often lose sight of one fundamental truth behind this search for personal redefinition--that it is a process we enter into on a voluntary basis, often...