Word: cuba
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...central fictional love story. Two strapping pilots (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett), friends since boyhood, fall for a hot nurse (Kate Beckinsale). Ultimate sacrifices ensue. Authentic figures such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Jon Voight), Lieut. Colonel James H. Doolittle (Alec Baldwin) and heroic black mess attendant Doris "Dorie" Miller (Cuba Gooding Jr.) appear in supporting roles, and the backdrop reaches for historical accuracy--at least until it gets in the way of the main story...
That leaves Cuba Gooding Jr. playing a real historical figure, Dorie Miller, for us to root for. Miller was a cook who, though untrained, manned a gun and may have shot down one or two Japanese planes. But his character is merely sketched into the narrative, and the entire assault on Pearl has a curiously abstract air about it. The bodies fly spectacularly when the Arizona is hit, but we don't know, thus care about, the victims...
...just that in the hysteria surrounding the release of "Pearl Harbor," I (like most other Americans blessed with the gift of sight) have been bombarded by scenes from the movie. The trailer (which I suspect is much better than the movie itself) showcases a triumphant Cuba Gooding, Jr., an anguished Kate Beckinsale and a constipated-looking Alec Baldwin. And then there?s Ben, who manages, despite what I?m sure is a very simple script, to look both bemused and lost in every frame he inhabits...
...gets regular phone calls from J. Edgar Hoover with instructions to infiltrate Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. For his part, Bondurant sets up a CIA plan to process poppies into heroin in Vietnam and use the profits to finance an insurrection against Fidel Castro in Cuba. Tedrow observes--"His standard procedure was watch"--and learns...
...such standards are less likely to be followed in parks outside the U.S. In Cuba, the source for many of the dolphins that end up in Caribbean aquariums, a fisherman can earn more than a year's income by selling a wild dolphin on the black market for about $800. Once trained, that same dolphin can fetch $1,500 a day at a Caribbean park. Several cases have been reported of dolphins suffering from stress, chlorine toxicity or an overdose of human affection. "Dolphins don't just drop out of the sky and end up in tanks," says Gwen McKenna...