Word: contrasted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Hiller concocts elaborate electronic toys to amuse the boy and an equally complex running fairy tale to divert him from his loss. Their unsentimental relationship is developed with a clarity that makes a shining contrast with the instinctive violence of their criminal associates and the devilish complexity of the heist. Hiller's contributions to the proceedings are as witty as the toys he builds for True, and the denouement of the whole tale is gratifying. But it is constant, often startling, shifts in the film's emotional tone, the economy of its writing and its lively movement through the - bleak...
Born in New York City and graduated from outdoorsy Dublin School in New Hampshire ("We did a lot of woodcutting"), Kennedy entered Harvard to study English literature. But he switched to biology and stayed on for a Ph.D., meanwhile coaching the Harvard ski team. In contrast to today's microbiologists, Kennedy says, he took the old-fashioned "butterfly route" in biology. He nonetheless rocketed up the academic ladder at Syracuse and | then Stanford, where he became provost in 1979. En route he detoured to Washington, first as a science adviser to Gerald Ford, then as Food and Drug Administration commissioner...
Dukakis, in contrast, was several hundred delegates ahead of Jackson but several hundred shy of the total needed to claim the Democratic nomination...
...contrast is potentially entertaining: a more or less authentic hero submits to movie mythologizing, while a made-up hero edges toward real bravery. Edwards tries to make this point through a labyrinthine murder mystery that takes the pair from high Hollywood (the first Academy Awards ceremony) to low (a house of ill fame where the girls impersonate movie stars). Edwards demonstrates a fondness for period dress, decor and autos, but he fails to develop an attitude, satirical or otherwise, toward his subject. And the obsessive twisting of his plot imposes a sinking weight of expository words on the picture...
What echoes today is a memory, almost mythic in proportions. Like all leaders who die young, Bobby is frozen in death as larger than life. As a memory, he evokes an era of political passion and social commitment that stands in haunting contrast to 1988. As a myth, he is a vessel into which all dreams can be poured. A recent Rolling Stone survey found that to this day only Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. stand out as heroes to the 18- to 44-year-olds who were interviewed...