Word: cecill
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...Waiting to Exhale author takes a multiperspective view of dysfunctional families with each member of the Price clan giving his or her own version of how screwed up they all are. The telling is led by Viola, the know-it-all matriarch and glue who holds her estranged husband Cecil and four far-flung children together. Their heavy load--incest, substance abuse, poverty, infidelity, death--makes this a soap opera, but it is leavened with a big dollop of sass...
British philanthropist and colonialist Cecil B. Rhodes provided the money for the annual award in his will...
...into joining their cause. And, in a piquant move, cast the real Patty Hearst in a small role. But since this is a movie about movies--spoiled film fatale Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) is taken hostage by a cinematic liberation army led by a dreamy buff who calls himself Cecil B. DeMented (Stephen Dorff)--an air of fantasy permeates the entire jape, detoxifying it. There's a geniality to gags about ratings ("Hey, hey, M.P.A.A., how many movies did you censor today?") and Robin Williams weepies ("Patch Adams does not deserve a director's cut; the original was long enough...
...stars give their roles a dizzy spin. Dorff's Cecil sports a manic gleam that could be dementia or star quality (if there's a difference), and Griffith is aces as the Hollywood harridan; when she sees her super-stretch limo, in white, she snarls, "Do I look like a coke dealer?" Maybe Waters is ironizing his anger at the movie brats who have stolen his attitude but don't understand his spirit. If so, the master is giving the kids a lesson here. Cecil B. proves how a dose of smart bad taste can be jolly good...
...polls show that an across-the-board voucher has more chance of passage. Indeed, Bishop Charles Blake, of the West Angeles Church of God in Christ, where Draper met with pastors, endorses the measure, which would be a boon to his 230-pupil Christian academy. But the Rev. Cecil Murray of the First African Methodist Church, fears "it would siphon off people of privilege [from public schools] and subsidize that siphoning." Families of the more than 600,000 California children already in private school would be eligible for an estimated $2.4 billion a year in vouchers. People like Draper...