Word: manchurian
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...Changsha. Next spring he will produce a novel, tentatively titled Journey to the West, that mixes Chinese myth and actuality. And next month will bring The Great Black Dragon Fire, by veteran journalist Harrison Salisbury. The fire was not fiction; it occurred in 1987, and it burned a Manchurian forest "so large that, like China's Great Wall, it could have been seen from the moon...
...right up there with George V. Higgins, but lately there is too much stuff and not enough funny. Mainly, this third book of the Prizzi series, about the good-guy Mafia assassin Charley Partanna, needs a dose of bran. In Condon's mad early novels -- The Oldest Confession, The Manchurian Candidate -- marvelous characters seethed with venality and obsession. In the current book there is still enough corruption to go around, but not much narrative drive. Condon's Mafia greedsters now own 32% of what there is to own in the U.S., "only five points down on the Japanese." Old, frail...
...rips turbulent drama from the back pages of a high school history book. It serves up an opulent visual sensibility amid exotic locales. And it concludes with a humanism that affirms both continuity and change for the family of man. Can't-miss stuff. Lawrence of Arabia with a Manchurian accent...
...should be confused by The Manchurian Candidate today. Axelrod's urbane cynicism plays like aces Wilde. Frankenheimer's aptly flashy technique is now a part of Hollywood's visual vocabulary. The performances are daring and assured, especially Lansbury's holy terror of Momism and Harvey's snide, pathetic pawn, brainwashed by both KGB AND CIA. And the movie's theory of endemic political corruption, which read as seditious in 1962, now feels like the sweet breath of reason. Few movies attempt to anatomize a whole sick society, to dissect the mortal betrayals of country, friend, lover and family; fewer films...
That caustic thriller The Manchurian Candidate is back after 25 years in the vaults. -- D. O. A.: this remake is dandy on arrival...