Word: idol
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...GOES," as Kurt Vonnegut says, but for a director of Chabrol's stature, it never should go like that. As cheap Freudianism expands into cheap theology, even a skillful development of suspense is neglected. The "second level" with which Chabrol's idol Hitchcock expands the thriller here comes forward and overwhelms the story. What could have been turned into suspense or shock--the identity of Helene's murderer--is abbreviated and intellectualized into a sort of "wrap-up" scene between Paul and Theo. It is the philosophy professor, significantly, who has to figure out that...
...must not be the satisfaction of one's own needs at the expense of others. It must not for instance, be an expiation of guilt. It cannot be an openness to people as abstractions, but as equals, as humans, and as part of a single system over which no idol presides. The difference in the two attitudes between regarding all who disagree with one's preconceptions as abnormal and accepting people within the rationality and struggles of their own lives--is the difference between perhaps doing good and the chance to do what is loving and right...
...former Baseball Swinger Ken ("The Hawk") Harrelson. His hazel eyes are as adept at staring soulfully at a pretty girl across a crowded room as they are at following a speeding ball across a net. Then there is the Lutz smile, or smirk, that has helped make him the idol of tennis "groupies." On court, he contends, the smile helps him relax. But it is the sort of constant expression that can get on an opponent's nerves, especially if it is backed up by consistently strong strokes. For much of Lutz's adult playing career, the smile...
Someone once walked up to Rod Stewart after a concert and told him he was the best singing. He said that the best was gone. "Twistin' the Night Away" is a tribute to Sam Cooke, Rod Stewart's personal idol. The song is not done with Cooke's smoothness, but that's not Stewart's style. But it's done well, with no trace of its datedness, as it's given a hard rock treatment. Measure enough of Stewart's homage and respect...
...vulnerability. He is a butterfly for sexual lepidopterists, strutting and jackknifing across the stage in a cloud of scarf and glitter, pinned by the spotlights. Nonresponsibility is written into his whole relationship with the audience, over which he has less control than any comparable idol in rock history; Elvis Presley, who can still tune the fans up and down like a technician twisting a dial, is the opposite. Jagger's act is to put himself out like bait and flick away just as the jaws are about to close and the audience comes breaking ravenously over the stage...