Word: gracefully
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...agrees to get rid of his birds and give up cockfighting. There is enough fun in this novel, though, to balance its rather hectoring tone. Codi has a deft way of observing her small, remote hometown, caught uneasily between past and future. When Halloween arrives, she notes, "Grace was at an interesting sociological moment: the teenagers inhaled MTV and all wanted to look like convicted felons, but at the same time, nobody here was worried yet about razor blades in apples." And the matriarchs who make up the town sewing circle, called the Stitch and Bitch Club, are both amusing...
...from the mining company. Kingsolver introduces other complications, particularly the fate of Hallie, who has been captured by the U.S.-supported contras. To say everything is resolved happily would be misleading, but one hint may be allowed. Anyone who thinks a giant mining concern is any match for the Grace Stitch and Bitch Club has a lot to learn about eco-feminist novels...
...American melting pot, gangsters were the indigestible pieces of ethnic gristle; country of origin was as crucial as turf. So we need some Irish gangsters. In Phil Joanou's State of Grace, they are based on the Westies gang, who ran the rackets in Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen. Other Irishmen run a big-city crime factory, about 1929, in Joel and Ethan Coen's Miller's Crossing, where, in the grand tradition, they fight the Italians and the Jews...
This sort of conversation gets a big play in State of Grace, which is so yoked to naturalism that it denies its denizens any lyric power. The Irish used to be able to talk at least. But they mostly shout and mumble in this story of a young man (Sean Penn) who returns to the Kitchen to find himself in a fatal family dispute involving his best friend (Gary Oldman), his old girlfriend (ravishing Robin Wright) and her gang-boss brother (Ed Harris). In State of Grace, the Irish are Italians without style. As one of them says, "We drink...
...Scorsese's triumph that GoodFellas offers the fastest, sharpest 2 1/2-hr. ride in recent film history. He has said he wanted his picture to have the speed and info overload of a movie trailer. Two great labyrinthine tracking shots -- at a neighborhood bar and the Copacabana -- introduce, with lightning grace, about a million wise guys. Who are they? What are they doing, and who are they doing in? Just to catch all the ambient wit and bustle, you have to see GoodFellas twice -- not a bad idea...