Word: casted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Flanagan's forte is his cast-some of them historical characters, others fictive-each invested with a complex, fascinating personality. Here is the reluctant scribe of rebellion, Owen Ruagh MacCarthy, a vagabond poet who scrounges a living by running an outlaw school, reciting his Gaelic verses in the houses of the rich and pursuing neutral grain spirits and colleens with unflagging energy. Here, in the cool rationality of Moore Hall, is MacCarthy's fellow Catholic and countryman George Moore, historian of the French Revolution and Cassandra of its Irish offspring, dreading that "the spirit of Rousseau...
Ever since the release of Howlin' Wind in 1976, Parker has stalked the big time, collecting delirious reviews but staying an arm's length away from the top of the charts and the kind of record sales that are commemorated with albums cast in semiprecious elements. Just last spring, with a new record company behind him, Parker released one of the year's best albums, Squeezing Out Sparks, and set out on two bruising cross-country concert tours to rally fans and baptize some new converts. His style of total-immersion rock is a salubrious shock...
...cast is full of interesting character actors who have no chance to do their thing. Those who applaud Alien for featuring a "liberated, non-sexist" heroine-Signourney Weaver, who proves to be the strongest and most resourceful crew member--should take another look at her brawl with Ian Holm; at last we have a heroine sturdy enough to be elaborately bashed and pummelled, slammed and kicked with enough intensity to give sado-masochists wet dreams for millenia to come...
Unlike Alien, where the cast is confined to monosyllables, the characters in Prophecy talk. A lot. Long time. Enough exposition for five giant monster movies. Everybody has a point of view; so did I--I munched my popcorn and thought about the blonde three rows down. When it comes to mixing horror and blatant social criticism, I prefer Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster...
What redeems these stereotypes is the controlled, idiosyncratic performances of a superb supporting cast. Director Siegel (Dirty Harry) never lets an actor go overboard. The same lean quality is visible in his film making. With the help of Bruce Surtees' elegant, metallic-hued cinematography, Siegel makes every point as economically as possible. His style is the visual equivalent of John D. MacDonald's prose, which serves this kind of material well. The tension builds so naturally that neither hokey music or contrived menace is necessary. Only once does Siegel lose control - in a jarringly graphic finger-chopping scene...