Word: battleship
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This episode alone is not what makes Napoleon memorable. That quality derives from its shooting and editing. D.W.Griffith demonstrated the limitless scope of the screen's ability to tackle big scenes in Intolerance (1916). Eisenstein, in pictures like Battleship Potemkin (1925), showed how the juxtaposition of disparate images could create, through montage, meanings that were more felt than consciously understood. Gance's great contribution was to set the camera free of the tripod, making it a participant in, as well as an observer of, the action. His tracking shots were unprecedented...
...Ruby will make it big in show business. But first the nasty leading lady of the show about to open that night, Mona Kent (Susannah Rabb), must be eliminated, done neatly when the public-works projects of the W.P.A. force the play-within-the-play to open on a battleship, where Miss Kent succumbs to sea-sickness. And of course Ruby has to fall in love along the way; one of those shore-leave sailors who always stroll along Broadway (Web Stone) appears just as she faints from hunger to catch her and croon...
...eight songs in each of the two acts, the dialogue never lasts long enough to be dull. Except when Howard Cohen's on stage. Fortunately, he has the smallest part of the six leads, although he doubles for the director of the Broadway show and the captain of the battleship. Cohen sings passably, but none of his spoken lines carry any conviction, And an actor needs conviction to get away with lines like "It's a chance in a million, but it just might work!" But the rest of the cast outweighs Cohen's weakness...
...American businessman has a very poor concept of the Japanese consumer. Compared with the more compact Japanese appliances, the American versions are marveled at as gargantuan rather than considered for purchase. The same is true of American cars. On narrow Japanese streets, many American automobiles resemble a cruising battleship. As an American living in Japan, I could not buy American products even if I wanted to because of their incompatibility with the Japanese lifestyle...
Perhaps the most exciting event of the new year was the kick-off of the news TV series, "Battleship Galactica," with a special three-hour segment two weeks ago. The show was made even more dramatic when it was interrupted by the announcement that the Camp David talks had resulted in agreement on a framework for peace in the Middle East...