Word: lovely
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What, then, one wonders on an idle summer evening, would the Shakespeare of Midsummer Night's Dream make of us, and what can we make of him? The first thing we notice when we see his play today is how little love has changed, with all its harsh geometry of triangles and unrequited passions; nor do we have any difficulty recognizing its evergreen cast of characters: the impatient suitor trying to persuade his girl to let him share her bed, the fair-weather swain shifting in an instant from rhapsody to rancor, the lovers plotting to escape a tyrannical father...
Besides, "the course of true love never did run smooth," as Lysander observes, and in seeing the muddle of our own times we are apt to overlook the fact that it was ever so. Faithlessness was hardly patented by Cressida, and even in Shakespeare's day, the theaters were full of Roman numerals. Sequels follow sequels. Romeo, let us not forget, was a heartstrong adolescent unable to imagine any girl save Rosaline -- until he set eyes on Juliet; and Juliet was a 13-year-old upstart who roundly abused both her murdering Romeo and her devoted nurse. Shakespeare himself addresses...
...Graduate students love to do the teaching. They get to do for the students whatever was or wasn't done for them," says Betty Lou Marple, the program's director. "They are still close enough to their own experience as students...
...sentences," Crystal says, "and he finishes my lunch" -- meets the challenge of making a compulsive Lothario not just likable but impishly seductive. And Ephron, a helpful Heloise of emotional heartburn, perks the script with clever answers to modern problems. How long should a man hold a woman after making love to her? "Somewhere between 30 seconds and all night." What doubt nags at any woman who lets Mr. Right get away? "You'll have to spend the rest of your life knowing that someone else is married to your husband." What is the guilty secret of married life...
...bruised but blooming; and the characters are so fully drawn that the moviegoer can become possessive of them, even judgmental, as he would with a friend. Would Sally have faked a fortissimo orgasm in a crowded restaurant? Would footloose Graham come back to Baton Rouge to find a love he lost nine years before? Of course they are not real people, and the difference is crucial in this talk-as-sex era. Real people talk back, act up, walk out. So let's leave the trend where it belongs: onscreen, in the season's smartest, funniest real- love films...