Word: eastwoods
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...happens, a pressing need. Director Clint Eastwood's vision of the jazz scene of the 1950s is touched, appropriately, by the austere romanticism of '50s existentialism. It is a circle of sheltering darkness, where the time is always 'round midnight, the mood is always accepting (it's not why you play but how you play that counts), and even agents and club owners are basically benign. Trouble is always an intruder from outside -- a narc obsessed with pinning bad raps on musicians, society ladies slumming, rock 'n' roll making rude noises on the periphery -- attacking the soul when...
...real distinction in Joel Oliansky's script, as in Eastwood's direction, lies mostly in its refusals. Focusing on the last three months of Parker's life, starting with a suicide attempt and ending with his sweet- smiling death as he watched a TV variety show, it flashes forward and back within this period, as well as through times past, jaggedly riffing the contradictory themes of amiable self-destruction in life and fierce self- transcendence in art, making no attempt to resolve the mystery or the irony of their presence in the same human composition...
...biographical films, soon to be released, will limn the twin toxicities of heroin and pop celebrity. Bird is Clint Eastwood's meditation on the pioneering jazzman junkie Charlie Parker; Wired adapts Bob Woodward's book about the life and drug-induced death of John Belushi. Both movies fit a familiar genre: a star is born, a star falls into the black hole of self- abuse, a star dies. But a third drug-and-alcohol drama, Clean and Sober, which opened last week to generous reviews, goes for the grit without the name- dropping glamour. It has eyes...
...people who usually play this role -- Clint Eastwood, Charles Bronson, Arnold Schwarzenegger -- seem to have been born to it, and often to very little else. What De Niro proves in Midnight Run is that it is a wonderfully actable part. What Willis proves in Die Hard is that it is not one you can ease through, especially if your preparation runs more to body building than to character building...
...Harry, San Francisco's most lethal cop, Eastwood can earn both laughs and respect just by standing in a crowded elevator and grunting "Swell" to his boss. Truth is, this time around, he doesn't get to do much else. Evan Kim, as Inspector Harry's Chinese-American partner, is allowed to display some martial-arts machismo. Liam Neeson, playing a director of low-budget slasher movies who is high on Harry's list of suspects in a serial-killer case, corners the market in upscale cynicism. James Carrey gets to go fruitfully bananas as a rock star...