Word: gauntlet
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...most video-game makers are having a miserable year. Specialty stores such as Babbages, Software ETC. and the Electronics Boutique report that sales of video-game software and hardware are down 15% to 30% from last year. At K-Mart and Toys "R" Us, games like Gauntlet and SolarStriker that used to sell for $30 or $40 are marked down to $9.99. The good news for Hawkins, however, is that America is no longer the center of the video-game business. The real action this year is in Japan, where parents are gearing up for Golden Days, the gift-giving...
...guess the rest before it happens, since Denis O'Neill's script is rudimentary. Wade soon proves to be a great deal less than he seems (he and Terry are grand larcenists on the wilderness lam). They need Gail's skill and bravery to get them through the Gauntlet (hushed tones whenever it's mentioned) -- a nasty set of falls, rapids and whirlpools. Tom takes a little ) more time to prove that he is a great deal more than he seems, a tenacious defender of (shall we say) family values...
...passage through the Gauntlet is a skillful blend of stunt and special- effects work, nicely orchestrated by the director, Curtis Hanson. He is less skillful at building suspense around the campsites, possibly because the screenplay is not very tightly or eccentrically wound, possibly because Bacon takes his best line too literally. "I am a nice guy," he says at one point. "I'm just a different kind of nice guy." As a result, Bacon doesn't hone Wade's menace as sharply as he might. He needs to become more erratic, more dangerous, as they paddle farther and farther from...
...Streep who rivets our attention and holds the picture together. Under Supermom's omnicompetence, there lurks the spirit of the larky girl who indeed ran the Gauntlet when she was old enough to know better and young enough not to give a damn. You can see that spunky, heedless young woman in her affectionate banter with her kids, in the sexiness of her response to Wade's come-ons, in the exultation with which she confronts the river's perils. This is smart and subtle acting and a gift that is above and beyond this movie's routine call...
Commentators on the right as well as the left have taken note of Genovese's gauntlet. In the New York Post, conservative editorial-page editor Eric Breindel described the essay as a "stunning and lucid document." In the Aug. 15 issue of the right-wing National Review, editor John O'Sullivan writes that the Dissent article and the subsequent responses to it mark "the beginning, not the end, of a debate." But in the same Dissent issue where Genovese's essay appears are six mostly negative reactions from academics. Alice Kessler- Harris of Rutgers University accuses Genovese of being...