Word: magic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Socialist share of the vote fell to 21% in the June 1984 European Parliament elections and rebounded only slightly, to 25%, in regional voting last March. Party strategists estimate that there is solid support for the Socialists among only 22% to 24% of the electorate. To achieve the magic 30%, the Socialists must make gains on both the left and the right. How to do that is at the root of all the soul searching within the party...
...problem when he portrayed Satan in Paradise Lost, and Le Guin, working on a different level, explicitly acknowledges the dilemma. One of the chorus of voices in the book belongs to Pandora, who seems to represent both the character from Greek mythology and contemporary Western consciousness. Through the magic of time travel, Pandora converses with a Kesh woman librarian. These enlightened people routinely throw away books and documents. As the dialogue continues, Pandora grows frustrated. "I never did like smartass utopians," she says. "People who have the answers are boring, niece. Boring, boring, boring." She has a point. But Stone...
Such tales are richly entertaining, but is it just possible that Welles, who loves both magic and practical jokes, is making some of these things up? Just for fun? As Welles said of his forgotten son, "Anything is possible." But Leaming is such an enthusiastic admirer that she not only took down everything Welles said, but argues his cause in all his old battles. Most of the star's botched or abandoned projects turn out to be someone else's fault or at worst a series of misunderstandings. Even the breakup of his marriage to Rita Hayworth is blamed...
...bounces like a solid premise for a light comedy. Similarly, the tension in the film between God as reasonable and Reason as god might have been engaging, like the crunch of cold modern science and warm timelessly-fashioned love. And the acting of Peter O'Toole, who worked similar magic in The Stunt Man, should have been able to sustain the tension between the comic and philosophical elements in the character of the tastefully crazed academic...
Given Hollywood's current taste for Spielbergian light-and magic shows, an "actor's movie" is a dying breed. But in Kiss of the Spider Woman, a film mixing the dangerous ingredients of politics and movie glamour itself, the actors' contributions are paramount...