Word: gongs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...goes The Mid-Life Crisis of Dionysus, a sly sketch from Garrison Keillor's American Radio Company show, and the ringing central gong of his amiable new collection, The Book of Guys (Viking; 340 pages; $22). But there's more, and worse. "Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls," Keillor writes. "Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet, a bad hormone experience. Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees...
...thecostumed, stage-painted Dieyi looks more like abeautiful, jilted lover than a best man, theexpression on his face a perfect tale of betrayal.Xiaolou only exacerbates the situation byreferring to Dieyi as his "sworn brother" andsuggesting that they visit a brothel together,putting Dieyi through agonies to which Xiaolou isoblivous. Gong Li, who starred in "Raise the RedLantern," plays the manipulativeprostitute-turned-wife Juxian, whose charactercomes to control to some extent the weakenedXiaolou. The rivalry between Juxian and Dieyi forthe love of Xiaolou gives the movie much of itstension...
...then Cheung, a Hong Kong actor living in Vancouver, might not have been available for the role of his career. As Cheng Dieyi, a homosexual star of the Peking Opera who is riven by jealousy when his "stage brother" Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) marries a call girl (Gong Li), Cheung is both steely and vulnerable, with a sexuality that transcends gender -- a Mandarin Michael Jackson...
Concubine is an Eastern film whose subject, scope and nonstop bustle will be agreeable to Western moviegoers. Anyone can appreciate the splendor of the theatrical pageantry or the dagger eyes of Gong Li as a dragon lady whose only commandment is survival. The scenes in the Peking Opera School, where boys are caned for doing wrong or right, are no less horrifying than the later tableaux of public humiliation at the hands of the Maoists. But Chen clearly sympathizes with the schoolmasters. From such brutality, he suggests, artists are created. Concubine offers another moral: From the crushing cultural restrictions...
...then Cheung, a Hong Kong actor living in Vancouver, might not have been available for the role of his career. As Cheng Dieyi, a homosexual star of the Peking Opera who is riven by jealousy when his "stage brother" Duan Xiaolou (Zhang Fengyi) marries a call girl (Gong Li), Cheung is both steely and vulnerable, with a sexuality that transcends gender -- a Mandarin Michael Jackson...