Word: cliches
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...also see, as an unexpected bonus, what a good painting American Gothic was. Major clichés become invisible after a while, and Curator Corn has made a valiant effort to strip the accretions from this one. She has included a hilarious collection of cartoons and ads based on American Gothic-an inspired piece of contextual criticism. Far from being a lampoon of conservative Midwestern farmers and their wives, American Gothic is, as she points out, "not about farmers, not about a married couple, and not a satire." Thirty-two years' difference in age lay between its models, Wood...
There are no Los Angeles natives, it is said, only immigrants. For the contributors to this week's cover story, the cliché was nearly true: Bureau Chief Benjamin Gate has been there only two years, while Correspondent Steven Holmes transferred from Chicago last year, Alessandra Stanley arrived six months before that, and Joseph Kane came five years ago. Picture Researcher Martha Haymaker has seniority with 15 years' residence. But an exception marks every rule: Reporter Laura Meyers, who turned up statistics more current than the U.S. Census Bureau's, is a lifelong Angeleno...
...story and milieu are familiar enough, in movies from The Graduate to Diner, to constitute a new American genre. But whenever Baby, It's You starts to become rambling or folkloric, Sayles and his charming young actors find a way to twist or energize the clichés. You can catch a glisten of moisture in the eye of an "easy," misused girl who's too proud to cry; or contemplate Jill's half-embarrassed smile when she goes dancing cheek to Sheik; or fall in with the gliding camera that circles the young lovers during their...
...Fast Times at Ridgemont High) plays the youth who recognizes his own decency and sensitivity about two hours after the audience has been tipped to it. Penn is fine; so are most of his companions in misery. But waiting for this film to embrace every known generic cliché is like serving an indeterminate sentence: you know it has to end but cannot understand why that shouldn't happen a whole lot sooner than it does...
...Club, and, to emphasize the lonely helplessness of Mac and his kind, a series of longshot landscapes that dwarf the actors. But with his jeweler's eye for casting and a fond patience with his actors, he allows every performance in Tender Mercies to shine through the visual clichés like the home truth in a country ballad...