Word: doves
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...easiest book to translate into film," says director Iain Softley of Henry James's The Wings of the Dove. Ring one up for the classic literary under-statement of the year. The notoriously dense late-Jamesian style, elliptical dialogue, and near-obsessive concentration on internal thoughts and consciousness guarantee an uphill battle in achieving upper-end-mainstream/borderline elite moviegoer appeal. Softley and screen-writer Hossein Amini have succeeded in crafting an intensely physical adaptation that takes enough sweeping liberties and simplifications to make James scholars cringe or shrug, but retains sufficient subtlety and sensitivity to be dramatically compelling...
Elliott, initially a tad bland as the "dove"-like American heiress, grows on you: though she never quite captures Milly's intense vitality and will to live, in her final scenes her placidity, affecting without being treacly, is vested with surprising grace. Roache (last seen in the lead role of the controversial Priest) delivers a convincing and finely nuanced performance as the attractive and passionate but indecisive lover who's neither quite strong nor quite weak enough to be a true...
...marginalization of the older generation in Softley's film appears to have been a deliberate choice. Softley, who previously directed the youth-centered, youth-targeted films Backbeat (chronicling the Beatle who dropped out) and Hackers, makes no bones about adapting The Wings of the Dove for the same age sector: "There was the danger that an audience, though about the same age as these characters, would feel alienated [from them]...I wanted to make something that would appeal to them...
Ghana is honoring six writers. Besides Gates, Maya Angelou, Alex Haley, Charles Johnson, Richard Wright and Toni Cade Bambara will each have their own stamp. In a separate series, Uganda will issue stamps of Rita Dove, Mari Evans, Sterling A. Brown, Stephen Henderson, Zora Neale Hurston and June Jordan...
...have the legs or the body," she says. "When I went there, I always felt to be the freak." But if there's any justice, she may have to go again: to sit in an aisle seat on Oscar night. A nomination for The Wings of the Dove might bring to that thoughtful, seductive face the least complicated smile it has ever worn...