Word: firsts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...film opens with a scene of squalor in the McCourt household in 1935. Angela has just given birth to her first daughter, adding to her family of four sons. Shortly afterward, the daughter dies. Unfortunately the viewer doesn't have time to care whether the infant lives or dies, thus revealing the first of many flaws in the film: in adapting the book to film, the filmmakers tried to cram as much of the book as possible into a two-hour movie, and this simply doesn't work...
...closing scene is so treacly and trite that it verges on being offensive. The young Frank McCourt, a fresh-faced Irishman with high hopes for the future, is looking out from a boat onto the Statue of Liberty--his first look at the beloved United States for which he's yearned for so long. As the score swells and Frank beams with delight, there's a moment of suspense before you realize that a chorus of ragged Irish immigrants isn't actually going to line up behind him and start singing "America, the Beautiful." This scene...
...Gordimer herself begs pardon, in this collection's first essay: nothing I write in such factual pieces will be as true as my fiction. What is appropriately important to her is emotional truth, words that somehow resonate inside the reader. Hemingway used to assure himself that if he could write one true sentence, he was on the right track: it is this kind of truth that is meaningful to the writer of fiction, truth to the spirit. The problem is, this is also the kind of truth that needs to be important to the writer of the kind of nonfiction...
...engaging in dialogue, yet she visibly shies away from the camera when she finishes her lines. Lee quickly establishes a romantic relationship between Shelley and Chiles, who sires a child before dying in a federal raid on the dugout. Chiles death scene is sickeningly melodramatic as Roedel and Holt first attempt to amputate Chiles' diseased arm, only to realize that Chiles' death is inevitable. Jewel attempts to be a grieving lover, yet the camera does not stop wandering over her buxom chest...
...that reverb overkill is all good all the time. The band best known for perfect mixes of diverse and often discordant sounds should have done a better job of mixing their set list. The first half left you with that cold Stereolab feeling inside; the first few songs after "Free Design," their most recent single, showcased their new-found rock-out tendency, leaving you reeling with the overwhelming strength of their steroid-pop. But after a while it started to grate on the eardrums and sounding the same, like the never-ending conclusion to a bad U2 song riddled with...