Word: evilness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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DIED. William Styron, 81, writer of morally provocative epics--including Lie Down in Darkness and The Confessions of Nat Turner--that explore, in agonizing detail, the human capacity for evil; on Martha's Vineyard, Mass. A descendant of slave owners, Styron became obsessed as a boy with the 1831 slave revolt led by Nat Turner, which began not far from his childhood home in Newport News, Va. Confessions, written in the first person, drew bitter criticism from black leaders, who called it presumptuous, but won Styron a Pulitzer Prize. Along with Sophie's Choice, the harrowing tale of an Auschwitz...
...fervently attacks the claim that morality is rooted in religious scripture: “To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird…the legend of the animals going into the ark two by two is charming, but the moral of the story of Noah is appalling. God took a dim view of humans, so he (with the exception of one family) drowned the lot of them including children?...
...recent release of director Amy Berg's Deliver Us from Evil, a profile of defrocked priest Oliver O'Grady, the most notorious pedophile in American Catholicism, has already resulted in front-page news stories and in O'Grady's departure from exile in Ireland, where newspaper accounts of the film made him a marked man. It renewed interest by the Los Angeles County district attorney in prosecuting the church hierarchy for its cover-up role in a narrative that both breaks the heart and angers the blood...
...that's also true of the visibly squirming Roger Cardinal Mahony, shown in a videotaped deposition as he tries to defend himself (and his church's wealth and power) from the scandal. Whether or not legal consequences derive from it, that footage alone makes Deliver Us from Evil one of the most powerful indictments of hypocrisy in high and trusted places you are ever likely...
...flying witches, armored bears and humans living alongside their animal-shaped souls. "It's a character-driven effects movie, if there is such a thing," director Chris Weitz says of the tale from Philip Pullman's series His Dark Materials. And what plays NICOLE KIDMAN'S soul? "A very evil, vicious monkey." But, you know, an elegant, Australian species...