Word: leveler
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...answer is obvious: the pressure toward mediocrity is simply too enormous to resist. To stand out one need perform only slightly better than the prevailing level of incompetence. To do much more is to play the fool-doing others' work -and invites the hostility of coworkers...
According to the refugees, one of the most striking recent changes apparent in Viet Nam is the corruptibility of middle-level party officials. Revolutionary zeal has given way to a cynical exploitation of Viet Nam's economic problems. Corrupt Communist officials have moved into the black market trade once operated by the ethnic Chinese. All of the Red River delta's major arteries south of Hanoi feature Communist-run "floating markets" that offer goods stolen from ships or directly off the docks at Haiphong. Conspicuous consumption among Communist officials has become so flagrant that Premier Pham Van Dong...
...first level, Magritte's art produced some of the most disturbing images of alienation and fear in the lexicon of modern art. There is no more chilling icon of the failures of sexual communication than The Lovers, 1928, with two anonymous (but inescapably similar) heads kissing through their gray cloth integuments. Nor are there many paintings that sum up the pathos of fetishism-the substitution of a symbolic part for the desired whole-more acutely than In Memoriam Mack Sennett, 1936, in which a woman's negligee, hanging on its own in a closet, has developed a forlornly...
...what makes the film work, at least at the pop-fairy-tale level, is the reality principle. The plot is improbable: the girl is left blind by injuries sustained in a bad fall, then begins a long, painful but ultimately successful struggle to regain her sight and skills. Yet the film is kept firmly grounded in plausible, recognizable territory by the realistic detailing in Donald Wrye's direction, the authentic tone of the dialogue and the straightforward work of an excellent cast. Tom Skerritt as the skater's father, reluctant to let her go, and her first coach...
...really deal with the ultimate horror of what America did to Vietnam. But Michael Cimino concerns himself more with what Vietnam did to America. He follows the lives of five Russian-American steelworker friends in a small Ohio valley town, while remaining largely true to actual events. This ground-level view is contrived at first--for instance, the actors are awkward and reckless with their guns, and they talk a little like displaced New Yorkers--but the emotional strength of the story wins the audience. Robert DeNiro carries the movie with the intensity of that inner distance he has copyrighted...