Word: earnest
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...absurdities of recasting the introductory civilization course at Stanford to purge many Western white male thinkers, the affront to civil liberties in the racial-speech code at the University of Michigan, along with analogous flaps at Howard, Duke and Harvard. But he rarely transcends his material; the writing is earnest, the details repetitive and the analysis predictable. Many of the best quotes and anecdotes in Illiberal Education turn out to be secondhand prose. A pivotal paragraph that argues that affirmative action lowers the self-esteem of black students is buttressed not by firsthand interviews but merely by citations from newspaper...
Charley is surrounded by some funny best friends, led by comedian Paul Reiser, who keeps the one-liners bouncing. And Baldwin plays dumb and earnest in an engaging way. Basinger is something of a problem. She is a very self- absorbed actress who gives the impression of a woman trying to get in on a joke she does not quite understand. Watching her reminds one wistfully of tart, smart Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys. But you can't have everything, and considering the difficulties of its creation, The Marrying Man is something: a comedy that bounces skittishly down...
...SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. The lacerating suspense of Thomas Harris' novel is missing from this earnest adaptation, but if you haven't read the book about an FBI trainee tracking one serial killer with the help of another, you ought to see the movie. Main attraction: the intellectual tug-of-wills between Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins...
...Short History of Harvard College suggests that the original duties of a house master were well-defined in a job description for masters of a medieval college at Cambridge, England: "To give his most earnest attention to all matters, spiritual and temporal, within or without, remotely or nearly concerning in the house...and...to defend the rights of the House, so that the scholars might peacefully and diligently pursue their studies...
...earnest consistency of Robin Williams, Robert DeNiro, and director Penny Marshall make it a triple shame that we can't seem to stay awake...