Word: campions
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...film opens with black-and-white shots of modern young women in the postures of liberation. An hour later there is a surrealist and, by Victorian standards, very racy peek into Isabel Archer's fantasy life. In every way, The Portrait of a Lady, director Jane Campion's version of the Henry James novel, provides steeply raked, hugely self-conscious angles on Isabel, who is often glimpsed in a murky bluish light. It's as if Campion were determined not to shoot a single frame that might be confused with a Merchant-Ivory production...
This is, perhaps, a commendable ambition. But it is also a mannered, distancing and irritating one. Campion's style is not helpful in involving us in one of James' most admired variations on his most basic theme: an innocent young American confused and seduced by wily European sophisticates. Neither is the near catatonic coolness with which Nicole Kidman plays a woman whose impulses toward self-definition are balanced (or unbalanced) by equally strong impulses toward self-destruction...
...unctuous invective against "moral decay" was the embodiment of religious hypocrisy, whose appropriation of the Kennedys' rhetoric served only to undermine their name and that of the school, was welcomed by the K-School establishment in order to promote (over C-SPAN) its spanking new conservative image. Forum director Campion comments, "I think what you're seeing is a very real conservative effort on the part of the K-School to present views from all across the political spectrum...
...School panel? CUA says it will have John Leo, a reactionary senior columnist for U.S. News and World Report; Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53; Jose Padilla '97, an acknowledged member of Peninsula; and Jay Dickerson '98, the president of the Harvard Republican Club, which Campion says is sponsoring the event. Sound like a balanced panel...
...Campion is quick to reply that the event is confirmed neither with her nor with C-SPAN, despite the privately-issued P.R. statement, which was faxed to The Crimson some two weeks ago. Campion says the IOP's role in the event would be to provide space and "work closely with students" to make sure that the event "is something that works in the forum." I guess right-wing rhetoric works well in the forum. If Harvard Democrats or the Black Students Association wanted to do forum events, Campion notes that the IOP would host those as well...