Word: attics
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Congress rushed to fund research on synthetic fuels and fusion and raised the mandatory fuel efficiency standards for new cars. Advertisements urged us to add a layer of insulation to our attic, turn down our thermostats and avoid driving to conserve energy. The oil shortage created an intense awareness that we must conserve fuel and find new sources of energy to ensure that our supply of energy could fulfill future demands...
Writer-Producer Anna Thomas and Writer-Director Gregory Nava have swathed their story in the amber sunsets of nostalgia. But this patina has the same effect on the winceable dialogue and agitated performances as lacquer on attic furniture. The farce of Destiny proves, yet again, that the road to dull is paved with bad pretensions...
Must be the Maitlands -- Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) -- the ghosts of the house's previous owners, who died a while back and now reside in the attic. This nice postmortem couple is no happier than Lydia (Winona Ryder) to be trapped here with trendy Charles (Jeffrey Jones) and the unspeakable Delia (Catherine O'Hara). So the Maitlands have been trying to scare the Deetzes away. Sorry, kids. Go ahead and haunt these New Age parvenus; they'll just invite their friends to enjoy the kicky spectacle. The Maitlands need some serious help, perhaps from the lecherous demon...
...these distortions, however, ignore the most fundamental distinction of all: the eccentric is strange because he cares too little about society, the weirdo because he cares too much. The eccentric generally wants nothing more than his own attic-like space in which he can live by his own peculiar lights. The weirdo, however, resents his outcast status and constantly seeks to get back into society, or at least get back at it. His is the rage not of the bachelor but the divorce...
...extremes in him, in brave, dumb Captain Midlife, jogging with the kids, exhaling frost; or out on the town, red-mufflered to the eyes, a Scotch ad beaming with conventional merriment. Inside his aching, brooding head, a mess of city-dump proportions. He crouches in the mind's attic like one of those soldiers who are never told that the war is over, and reads that Michael Korda, a modern adviser on how to live, says that by the time one reaches one's 40s, all emotional and professional problems should be settled. The Captain hopes he will not have...