Word: central
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...broker and lawyer pals are either consciences or bad company. The film seems intended as a blend of morality play and classical satire -- Everyman meets Volpone. Stone always comes at you with big dreams and nightmares; he wants the first and last word on every subject he touches, whether Central America (Salvador), Viet Nam (Platoon) or Wall Street. This time he works up a salty sweat to end up nowhere, like a triathlete on a treadmill. But as long as he keeps his players in venal, perpetual motion, it is great scary fun to watch him work...
...unemployment rate dipped in November from 6% to 5.9%; it has not been lower since July 1979. Moreover, West Germany's Bundesbank announced a cut in the discount rate that it charges on loans to banks, from 3% to 2.5%. That move, along with reductions by six other European central banks, could help boost the world's flagging economic growth...
...film, which Director Abuladze calls a "tragic phantasmagoria," uses allegory, fantasy and surrealism to evoke the terror of a totalitarian system. His central character is Varlam Aravidze, the mayor of a provincial town. Varlam combines Stalin's close-cropped haircut, Hitler's mustache and Mussolini's black shirt to embody the image of a universal tyrant. Although the setting and time are undefined -- secret police appear alternately as medieval knights or spear-wielding Roman centurions -- there is no doubt that the real subject is Stalinism...
...next day Foreign Minister Shevardnadze, who was in the U.S. for a visit to the U.N., called on President Reagan at the White House and delivered an invitation from Gorbachev to Reagan for a meeting in Reykjavik. An official on the powerful Central Committee Secretariat, Georgi Kornienko, said in Moscow, "We feel it is important to make progress somewhere, and INF appears to be the only area of opportunity." All indications were that the deal the Soviets had in mind was the interim agreement, not the zero option...
After a year of training in secret camps in Thailand, 200 exiled Vietnamese last summer launched a quixotic campaign. Part of a movement calling itself the National United Front for the Liberation of Viet Nam, they stealthily crossed the jungles of Laos last July, making for the Central Highlands of their homeland. There they hoped to link up with mountain tribesmen opposed to the Communist government and begin a guerrilla war to overthrow Hanoi. Each commando carried an automatic rifle and 200 rounds of ammunition. Beyond that, the battalion had only some rocket-propelled grenade launchers and machine guns...