Word: atom
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...teach what is widely acknowledged to be unteachable. Things are going well for him. His big new novel, Cloudsplitter (HarperCollins; 758 pages; $27.50), about the raging, God-haunted 19th century abolitionist John Brown, is about to hit the bookstores, and he has learned this very day that director Atom Egoyan's movie of his novel The Sweet Hereafter has earned two Academy Award nominations. Another film, drawn from his novel Affliction and starring Nick Nolte, is ready for distribution. He smiles. Equal to equal, a diamond stud in his left ear glinting encouragingly, he addresses the 11 Princeton freshmen...
...there is the chronic pain of the Middle East peace process. Arab leaders have no love for Saddam but they oppose dropping more bombs on Iraq because from their perspective, Clinton has a double standard. He relentlessly pursues Saddam's weapons of mass destruction while saying nothing about the atom bombs everyone assumes Israel has stashed in its basement. The Arabs believe Clinton is less likely now than ever to buck Congress and his own party by browbeating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu into a deal...
...There is no such thing as an accident," lawyer Mitchell Stevens (Ian Holm) tells prospective clients in Atom Egoyan's haunting film The Sweet Hereafter. Somebody must be to blame for the school bus accident that killed 14 children in a small Canadian town, he explains to the grieving parents whom he hopes will join his lawsuit. Fortunately, director Egoyan chooses a more complex path for his film, focusing on the capacity for survival instead of retribution...
None, of course. Unless you can find cold comfort in cold cash. Which is why a sardonic God invented negligence lawyers. Russell Banks, author of the novel from which Atom Egoyan derived The Sweet Hereafter, has, however, improved on His handiwork, creating in Mitchell Stephens (Ian Holm) a man who chases settlements with a chills-and-fever passion that can be explained not by greed but by the suppurating wounds life has inflicted on him. The man, whom Holm plays with superbly controlled fanaticism, wants compensation from an unfair universe but finds momentary relief in squeezing more readily available targets...
...promises. Only one maverick breaks the unanimity of the town's acceptance. Bailey, played haphazardly by Doug Floyd, questions the wisdom of having such a destructive potential in such a fragile surrounding. More importantly, he questions man's wisdom to tamper with natural balances, to toy with the atom...