Word: fictions
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With the very first scene, all the huggy-warmy feelings usually associated with animated features take a nose dive. This futuristic movie on laser disc is a virtuoso piece of speculative fiction, a violent adventure tale, a head- bending sci-fi morality play and a venture into the higher realms of animation art that kicks all the squishier conventions of the genre right in their well-upholstered butt...
...story of Matthiessen's life sounds like a colorful adventure tale. The son of a New York City Social Register architect, he had already, by the time he graduated from Yale, studied at the Sorbonne, served in the Navy and sold fiction to the Atlantic. After a short stint teaching writing at Yale, followed by a spell in Paris, he began working as a commercial fisherman to support his art. Then, separated from his first wife (he has had three, and four children), he loaded a few books, a gun and a sleeping bag into his Ford convertible...
...wistfully, and in conversation he certainly talks often of "fun," his sonorous voice rolling up and down with command and theatricality, now mimicking a genteel old lady, now a Taoist sage. "I've never in my life -- or hardly ever -- laughed so loud as during the creation of my fiction," he says, while acknowledging that his humor may be too laconic for some tastes. At the same time, he remains unflinchingly serious in his determination to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves...
Americans have a love affair with people who keep trying and trying. A larger-than-life statue of Rocky Balboa stands in front of Philadelphia's Veterans Stadium. The hard-luck Joads of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath are among the most beloved families of American fiction. In some parts of the country William Jennings Bryant, despite his three failed attempts for the White House, is still a populist hero...
...Here, in fiction, and in less than a minute, the gridlock that has paralyzed Washington is neatly exposed: Congressmen don't have to chase money with their votes; there's so much around they can cop all they want no matter what their stance on a specific issue. "It's not that bad things happen, although they sometimes do," says Marty Kaplan, The Distinguished Gentleman's screenwriter. "It's that good things don't happen. The real story is that Washington is frozen, and a lot of people are making a killing keeping it that way." Kaplan knows the territory...