Word: actioner
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...should stick to the action figures...
Those expecting another Bonfire may be disappointed--the new novel is better. It's not quite as glitzy and brash and hilariously in-your-face as its predecessor, but then Atlanta in the late '90s, where most of the action occurs, is a more well-mannered place than New York City was in the '80s. The same bloodlusts--sex, money, status--rage in the New South as they do everywhere else; it just takes a little more digging to find them. Wolfe does, of course, but among all the animal appetites that are slaked or comically thwarted during the novel...
McKellen has had tiny roles in flop movies (Last Action Hero, I'll Do Anything), and though he originated the role of Salieri onstage in Amadeus, he didn't get the part in Milos Forman's film; maybe Forman thought F. Murray Abraham was more photogenic. Or perhaps he detected an unease in McKellen's film presence. "I belong on a stage," the actor says. "I feel totally at home. But at a studio, surrounded by other experts who all have their contributions to make, I used to feel a terrible pressure as the person in front of the camera...
...instance, in the tangled debate over affirmative action, both sides too often assume that the rationale for efforts to get blacks a fair share of jobs, government contracts and slots in elite universities is to make up for historic oppression. But that is preposterous. We don't need affirmative action because our ancestors were slaves; we need it because so many of us are still being denied opportunities because of our race...
...Hamilton is night manager at the Eagle, a seedy Liverpool hotel whose habitues "wander in from twelve o'clock onwards...clutching at their down-below parts, ready for their lonely bit of action." The narrator of this slangy, tangy first novel from Britain has seen it all. Or so he thinks, until the Eagle falls into the hands of managers from the head office, who express concern for their "customer-stroke-guests" while remaining oblivious to the shenanigans under their noses. Throw in a racist thug, some lovable Cockneys and Rastafarians, and a whiff of violence...