Word: bastian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...storyline is simple. A young boy, Bastian, running from the bullies who regularly beat him up and take his lunch money, ducks into a dusty old bookstore for safety. The curmudgeonly owner tells him to get out, to go play video games like all the rest of the kids, but Bastian stands his group, declaring proudly that he owns 186 books. Bastian then asks to see what the old man is reading, but the latter refuses, saying. "It isn't safe." He explains that while a good book gets one involved with the plot, it is, after all, nothing more...
Predictably, Bastian steals the book and sneaks off to read it. Inside he finds the story of Atreyu's quest to save Fantasia from the Nothing, a terrible force that threatens the fictional world from all sides. Bastian gets caught up in the story and soon finds himself mysteriously cropping up in what he reads; at one exciting moment he screams and immediately reads of Atreyu cringing at the sound. Bastian is drawn in more and more, eventually playing a pivotal role at the story's climax...
...film also contains an interesting paradox. It is heartening to see reading touted as an important, powerful activity after dozens of films like Joysticks and Footloose touting the mindless. But, ironically, Bastian does not read the book curled up at home in front of the fire; he cuts a math test and spends the night in the school's attic reading by candlelight. Sure, reading and imagination are important--but they're not complete and absolute excuses for ignoring everything else...
...give up. This week they took us on a field trip to see a couple of "nonviolent" movies for kids. This one picture, Wolfgang Petersen's The Neverending Story, it's more like a movie for wimps. Here's this ten-year-old called Bastian, played by Barret Oliver, who's so weak he can't even screw the lid off a Welch's grape-jelly jar. Three bullies from school beat him up and make him jump in a trash bin. A total loser. Then he goes up into the school attic...
Time may be running out. After helping to lead the party's crusade against the installation of American cruise and Pershing II missiles, retired two-star Bundeswehr General Gert Bastian quit the Greens last month, complaining of the creeping influence of the party's Marxist-Leninist faction and "a strong anti-American undertow." Elected last year as one of the party's 28 Green Deputies in the Bundestag, the gray-haired and soft-spoken 60-year-old was one of the few Greens with appeal to middle-class citizens seeking an alternative to the Social Democratic Party...