Word: minis
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...founded the American Tobacco Company. But the richest girl in the world found only domestic rancor: a hateful mother, scheming lovers and, finally, a butler (Richard Chamberlain, all oil and vitriol--a nicely creepy job) who hastened her death and gained her fortune. This mini-series, directed by John Erman, has the impulse for high trash but not the racing pulse, the quick, bold strokes; its view of the rich getting skewered by the would-be rich is curiously sedate. The reason to watch is Lauren Bacall; she has the glamour, gravity and great bones to give the elder Doris...
...director deals with one aspect of the multiple mini-plots very well. The issue of introducing each character's name and personality presents a promising opening to the film. Carroll throws the personas at the audience in a whirlwind of brief conversations and interactions for each character clinched with their written name appearing on the screen. It is obvious that the director understood the confusion that could result from a menagerie of seemingly unrelated stories and effectively compensates with the introduction. Unfortunately, this only keeps the knotted plot untangled momentarily, as you quickly become mired in the intrinsic flaws associated...
...International homeopathic remedies? Got it. The Cheshire cheese to crumble into a mesculine-green salad? Oh, it's there. Starbucks latte to sooth the post-exam/second semester nerves while perusing a mini-bookstore of cheesy bestsellers? Yup. When entering Star for the first time, all troubles simply evaporate amidst the wafting scents of the fresh baked bread in the open air bakery. The huge store is an oasis of happiness; it is a whole new world where everything is possible and anything is edible. Half the store is a gigantic freezer filled with Ben and Jerry's ice cream...
...snowstorm hits. He knows the town's secrets and tells them; he weaves fatal mischief. "Give me what I want," he says, "and I'll go away." But if that gift were your own blood, would you offer it up to save your town? King's first original mini-series script is a marathon of communal anxiety with a spooky moral: we are ready to mortgage our children for our own restless comfort...
This energy owes much to the script, whichwisely--in the best teen soap-operatradition--does not dwell for too long on anyparticular mini-conflict but also to the actors,who as a group were much better with movement andmelodramatic expressions of emotion than withsubtle feeling and delivery. Matt MacInnis '02(playing Jason Rosner) is a very good andconvincing screamer; Henley-Cohn is a fine stagepresence, and has a considerable amount of(misplaced, in this play) sex appeal; and JayChaffin '00 (as the rebellious Elliot Dachs, butreminiscent of nobody more than Seinfeld's George)has a very good sense of comic...