Word: effortlessness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...times Dead Ringers also tilts out of coherence, with scenes that are dramatically stillborn. But Irons is splendid in both roles, and Cronenberg can create tour-de-force tableaux with his effortless black magic. In one, Bev strides into surgery dressed in red, like a demon priest at a sacrificial rite. The victim is woman; her crime is woman's unique advantage over man, the power to produce perfect new bodies from the most vulnerable part of her own. Any mad scientist, any man, can try either to serve that power or to destroy it. And Bev must finally love...
...gags -- even those quoted from such Bugs Bunny classics as Falling Hare and Rabbit Seasoning -- have the limber wit of the cartoons that inspired them. Nor do the human actors add much. Hoskins, in a role for which Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray were considered, lacks their effortless star quality. He's more like an armor-plated Yosemite Sam, gruff and explodable. Only Christopher Lloyd, as the evil Judge Doom with a scheme even more nefarious than the one hatched by the burghers of Chinatown, easily straddles the film's two worlds...
...paradox of this campaign is that Bush, for all his youthful grace and charm, is now displaying neither. The effortless way he assumed leadership at Andover and Yale has vanished. By contrast, Dukakis, who lacked Bush's early ease, is having some success using the determination from his early days to master the political art of appearing warm...
...universities.) Even from within the Stanford community, there are those who feel that the place is perhaps a little "too California," as one faculty member puts it. Senior Andrew Patzman points to an intellectual schizophrenia: "There is a certain pressure to be relaxed and to make your work appear effortless...
...whether the film is any good, the answer, surprisingly, is yes. It's actually rather superb, a stunning visual record of the rock touring phenomenon, and a clear display of Frank's singular talent for effortless camera work...