Word: laudanum
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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John Irving's rural sprawl of a novel becomes, in his screenplay, a small epic with subtle strengths. The setting is harsh--a Maine orphanage in the early '40s, with war and sexual abuse looming--but the mood is warm and precise, as a flinty, laudanum-addicted doctor (the excellent Michael Caine) tutors his brightest charge (Tobey Maguire, the most watchful of young actors) to be his protege. Hallstrom, here as in My Life as a Dog and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, lets the characters carry the story without allowing the actors to push too hard. This...
...told, Sears sold 100,000 prefabricated models, and most of them are still standing and occupied today. Some of the items advertised in the early years seem, well, unseemly now. Before the Food and Drugs Act of 1906, the catalog listed a number of dubious medicinal aids, including laudanum, a notoriously addictive, opium-based headache remedy and sedative. Pistols and rifles were aggressively marketed for years. The big book luxuriated in excess. Who had ever thought of buying a car by mail? The 1910 catalog offered an automobile called a motor buggy -- manufactured by Sears -- for $395. Never...