Word: main
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...attend a state school or an Ivy League one. And binge drinking will not go away until there is a radical change in American attitudes toward alcohol. Ala Alryyes, a former MIT undergraduate and graduate student and current instructor in Harvard's history and literature department explained that "the main problem here is a cultural problem, an American problem....The anglo-saxon take on drinking is that you drink to get wasted, to form social bonds as opposed to the Latin view of drinking, which is more social. Drinking leads to conversations instead of passing out. [In the American conception...
Unfortunately, once Hayley Mills begins to sing "Getting to Know You," the effect is lost. Mills plays the main character, Anna Leonowens, a widowed teacher who is brought to Bangkok by the King of Siam (Vee Talmadge), to educate the royal children (a group of adorable new talents ranging in ages from...
...main problems with this musical is that Mills and Talmadge are not really all that convincing. Mills is adequate as the modernized English governess intent upon changing the antiquated Siamese social customs. Talmadge does an even better job as the patriarchal King whose rules have been unquestioned before this presumptuous woman sets foot in his castle. However, there is no spark of interest in the relationship between the two characters; in fact, if one didn't know the story, one would never guess that these two would fall in love. Mills flounces around in her crinolines criticizing the King...
...sing along, but it would have been great to hear one of these characters, preferably the King, really belt one out. Worse still, sexism, classicism and European elitism (the three evil isms) abound in this musical: the fact that European culture is valued over Asian culture, the main reason for Anna's presence in Siam, is continually reinforced. But the royal kids are cute, the costume and set design are amazing and the Rodgers and Hammerstein score is enough to shell out the bucks and enjoy the show...
Godard's deep-voiced narrator even instructs us on how to react and read the images and characters of his film by entering into the film periodically, creating cinematic parentheses. The narrative voice enters, for example, when the three main characters are at a dance club. Odile, Franz and Arthur move across the floor in a beautiful synchrony. In this way we are brought into the mental worlds of the three main characters. Odile wonders whether the men who flank her on either side notice her breasts bobbing beneath her schoolgirl sweater. Arthur imagines kissing Odile. And the ever-slick...