Word: missed
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...sexy in a sulphur-scented way. Writers have been especially beguiled, from Marlowe and Milton to Shaw and Stephen Vincent Benet. Indeed, while putting God on display as a character is normally a guarantee of literary disaster, it sometimes seems that stories about his arch-opposite just can't miss. Presumably there is a sound theological basis for all this: virtue could hardly be considered virtuous if it were also indisputably fun, while a patently offensive Old Nick would have trouble procuring the ruin of souls...
...DRIVING MISS DAISY...
...affair made in tabloid heaven: stripteaser Blaze Starr ("Miss Spontaneous Combustion, and I do mean bustion!") and Earl K. Long, fine Governor of the great state of Louisiana. Long was too full of his princely power to be discreet about his indiscretions. Blaze could have told him -- and in this lengthy, clever, depressing film she does -- that "your political instincts are clouded by the aroma of my perfume." By 1959, when Long's campaign slogan was the forthright "I ain't crazy," his liaison with the stripper was as controversial as his tax evasion and support for Negro voting rights...
Such a metaphor is available in Driving Miss Daisy. If you look hard, you can find in this account of the 25-year relationship between Daisy Werthan (Jessica Tandy), a genteel Southern, Jewish matriarch, and her black chauffeur, Hoke Colburn (Morgan Freeman), a microcosmic study of changing racial attitudes in a crucial time and place (Atlanta, circa 1948-73). What you will not find in this marvelously understated movie is overtly inspirational comments on that subject, broad sentimentality or the slightest pomposity about its own mission. In other words, Alfred Uhry's adaptation of his Pulitzer-prizewinning play aspires more...
Director Bruce Beresford's tone is cool and shadowy -- like Miss Daisy's fine old house. Hoke is introduced into it by her son Boolie (Dan Aykroyd, displaying full credentials as an actor), when at 72 Miss Daisy careers her car into a neighbor's yard. She has objections, suspicions. She harbors -- yes -- more racial prejudice than she has ever been forced to admit...