Word: height
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Part of it is pure nostalgia. At the height of scooter mania in the 1950s, the sleek, steel-framed bikes were symbols of romantic escapism. Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn putted through Rome on a Vespa in Roman Holiday; it was a favorite toy of Hollywood's elite, including Gary Cooper and Jayne Mansfield. In 1960s England, while big, grease-sputtering Harleys were ridden by leather-clad Rockers, elegant Vespas were the signature of their archrivals--and regular rumble opponents--the fashionable Mods...
...McCanlies, who wrote this handsomely animated feature, have given it a special urgency by the simple expedient of setting it in exactly the right time and place. That would be 1957 in a small town in Maine. It's a moment when cold war paranoia is at its height and isolated rural communities are the targets of choice for aliens in dozens of cheapo sci-fi epics...
...while Chris Isaak's perfect "Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing" messes with the tone of the moment. Though Kidman and Cruise don't have sex on-screen (what a tease!), the short scene is wonderful because it is so loaded. Combine Kidman's glances into the mirror, her height advantage over Cruise, Isaak's strange lyrics (the verse Kubrick chooses is an interesting one) and the couple's blatant awkwardness, and you have a classic piece of cinema in 90 seconds...
...Certainly, it's an impressive-looking thing; measuring nearly 400 ft. from its needly nose to its four stubby fins, it was designed on a scale more commonly associated with buildings than machines. The problem is, it's been decades since this particular machine actually stood to its full height. Instead, it has spent most of its life lying on its side in the withering Houston sun--beached, spent, a triumph less of engineering than of taxidermy...
...wonder that Locke got so stressed out by the challenging 12-hour days that, as she says, "my body started to break down"? Lindo is apologetic. He should have been more constructive, he says. Maybe so. But Locke, who loses at least a foot to Lindo in height, doesn't back down. "I see beyond the polarity," she says of race relations, speaking with the same hopeful tone that powers her script. At dinner one night, Redford sees in her eyes that Locke is trapped in the halfway house between self-confidence and self-doubt. He strolls up and tells...