Word: burnsian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Burnsian style is full blown in both works: slow pacing, reverent interviewees, soothing strings and custardy voice-overs. It may seem harsh to call this sentimental and dull, but something in this pledge-drive-friendly aesthetic belittles the films' intense, contentious subjects. The suffrage movement was ardent and revolutionary; what we get sounds like an ice cream social...
Millennium hopscotches the world in vignettes, making regions characters in a global mini-series (and paying ample attention to non-Western areas). It eschews Ken Burnsian still lifes for a tarantella of computer animation, film clips, re-enactments and folk performances, whirling impatiently like the dervishes and dancers it uses to maximum effect. This mix can shock us into seeing the present in the past, as when Isaacs crosscuts modern Italian hipsters and preening Renaissance Florentines. The conventional re-enactments, however, are like a forced march to colonial Williamsburg...
...reach the Pacific Ocean. The familiar Burns techniques are here--actors reading letters, a cast of commentators, panning shots of historical images--but they are supplemented by the spectacular landscapes of the Great Plains, the Rockies and the Pacific Northwest. It is a pleasing package, nevertheless marred by the Burnsian sensibility...
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