Word: craven
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: SEASON FINALE (WB) Like the Littleton shootings--which prompted its postponement, one of TV's several craven post-Columbine p.r. gestures--Buffy's wry, touching season ender exposed the demons in a prosperous suburb. Werewolf Oz's words after the climactic battle scene--"We survived...high school"--were a resonant caption to the year of the troubled teen...
...condemned man's head makes electrocution seem a sacrament: baptism and extreme unction in a single dab. The healing scenes will evoke tears, some of them earned. And there's a lot of sharp acting, led by Hanks' pained restraint. The two villains are vigorously portrayed: a sadistic, craven guard (Doug Hutchison) and a strutting, rabid inmate (played with a daringly lunatic, dark-star quality by Sam Rockwell), whose crimes are even worse than we feared. At the core, though, one finds a slacky, sappy film. The human mystery that breathed so easily in Shawshank is often forced here. Grandstanding...
...body...my blood." Good Jews that they were, a few nearly gagged at the thought of drinking blood, but no one refused. Practically speaking, he was already dead--they could almost see it--and everything from here on was only a sign, to keep in memory, everything but the craven fear that was already closing on them entirely...
...attempts to turn herself into a New Yorker have been amateurish. When the Chicago native proclaimed herself a closet Yankees fan, when the Methodist disclosed her Jewish roots, when the advocate for poor children came out in favor of milk price supports--these moves made her seem craven, ham-fisted. When the progressive copied her husband's tactic of using party soft money to finance early TV spots, she looked no better than he. And when Bill Clinton granted clemency to a group of Puerto Rican terrorists--a move that some of Hillary's key Latino backers had lobbied...
...played any musical instrument before, but after two months of lessons, she jumped into classroom scenes that required her to simultaneously play and instruct students. More than half of the 150 children who appeared in the film have studied with the real Roberta Guaspari. Most have never acted. If Craven was aiming for reality, then he surely...