Word: alec
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When Graham Gund Architects began work on the Inn at Harvard, the University Planning Committee, which commissioned and oversaw the building of the hotel, wanted it to match the style of the college, said Alec Holser, an associate of Graham Gund architects...
...literary emigres who settled in the film capital in the '30s and '40s, namely Bertolt Brecht and Thomas Mann and his brother Heinrich (along with Austro-Hungarian dramatist Odon von Horvath, who never really made it to America but serves as fictionalized narrator). Yet an impressive cast -- Jeremy Irons, Alec Guinness, Sinead Cusack -- cannot lift this PBS American Playhouse adaptation much above elegant name dropping. Despite snatches of Ragtime-esque fantasy and an ending that pays homage to Sunset Boulevard, the drama is hobbled by an old plot: crass Hollywood grinds down true artists, told once more with less feeling...
...Blake (Alec Baldwin) makes a cameo, bringing in his steel briefcase the old themes from "Downtown": "Closers get more leads (names to call on) and losers get out." Blake has no mercy for leftovers like Levene. He delicately encourages those who don't like it to "get the fuck out" and taunts those who stay with the fact that his watch costs more than each of their cars. If you can't sell his trashy property deals, you're nobody to Blake...
...gives way to the present imperative now -- because there's a dogfight among the four middle-aged men whose tough job it is to cozen the consumer. The top salesman will win a Cadillac; runner-up gets a set of steak knives. And third prize? Ask the cool executive (Alec Baldwin), himself a human steak knife, who has dropped by to explain the competition. "Third prize is you're fired...
Among his inspirations, Damon cites Marlon Brando, who he calls "a genius. There's no other way to put it. He's the best actor I've ever seen." Other greats are Meryl Streep. Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro and Alec Baldwin. He would "love to work with any of these actors...