Word: balms
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These are facts of an industry's life, not its death. Hollywood may be a company town-as Scorsese notes, "Everything is geared to turning out the product"-but United Artists is not Chrysler. This gaggle of statistics can act as balm to the harried film maker's brow, but is unlikely to stanch the malaise. If Hollywood is conducting business as usual, few people seem enthusiastic about the enterprise. Robert Redford, 43, whose directorial debut, Ordinary People, is the odds-on favorite in the Oscar sweepstakes, asserts that the industry's "obsession with demographics has produced...
...life. As the clock ticks, his characters fill the passing hour with the tang of Irish talk and freshets of Irish humor, with the surge of sex and the ache of love, with religious piety and tipsy poetry. Leonard's people feel the sting of remorse, offer the balm of compassion, and embrace the abiding little ironies of the condition called human...
...pathetic human tragedy. How lovely it would have been if PBS had withdrawn the program, not because of pressure but simply out of respect for another country's religious beliefs and customs. Such an act of kindness might have been one small step toward peace, a healing balm for our frightened and anguished world...
...question remains: What took Mowat 35 years to write and publish this book? In an "Anti-Epilogue" that he says was written only at the insistence of his publisher, the author hurriedly speaks of old agonies, the balm of forgetfulness, and of his conviction that all wars are futile and immoral. There is even the ritual reference to what Wilfred Owen called the old Lie: "Dulce et decorum est/ Pro patria mori"- how sweet and beautiful it is to die for one's country...
...juvenile delinquent "Arlie" (Pamela Reed). Even behind bars, Arlie is a rampant engine of malice. She trashes her food, throws screaming tantrums, fends off with barbed obscenities anyone who tries to help her. Yet some passing unseen chaplain anoints this child's dark, turbulent soul with the balm of the Scriptures...