Word: mysticism
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...stoned surfer dude in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And one of his four Oscar nominations was for playing a sweet-souled retarded man in I Am Sam. But he won an Oscar this year for mobilizing an implacably vengeful rage as the father of a murdered girl in Mystic River. Before that, he turned his anger into the rancid sullenness of a tormented guitar player in Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown and made us sympathize with an unapologetic killer in Tim Robbins' death-row drama, Dead Man Walking. Let's call him a necessary actor. The movies always...
...True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths." Some years ago Bruce Nauman spelled out those words in a now famous electric wall piece. An exalted statement in burger-bar neon. Did he mean it? To this day we don't know. But if there is something about contemporary art that you find baffling or unnerving or belligerent, chances are Nauman is somewhere behind it. Years before Damien Hirst submerged a sliced shark in formaldehyde, Nauman made his own comment on flesh and death called Carousel: four metal arms swing in a circle like a ceiling fan, with...
...need to connect to the audience that makes Man a more successful tragedy than Helgeland’s Mystic River script. Scott’s actors play their melodramatic roles with a grace that Sean Penn did not achieve in that film’s overwrought dinner-theater performance. This decision gives what is essentially a well-written straight-to-HBO Rutger Hauer flick a core that Mystic never achieved. Can you imagine what Christopher Walken would have been in Eastwood’s hands? Here, he underplays his role. Let me repeat that: Walken underplays a role. The last...
...kidnapping plot is incoherent. Somehow it involves a shadowy secret agency of corrupt cops and villainous baby’s mamas, but their interaction with the actual kidnapping is never clear. Pita’s mother has hysterics that belong in a Mystic River, not this profoundly reserved effort: she quickly becomes no more than annoying. Why is unfazeable do-gooder journalist Mariana (Rachel Ticotin) so well-connected, and why don’t some of the uber-powerful villains follow through on their threats against her? Why is Scott Free productions fixture Giancarlo Giannini so damn cool as Mariana?...
...autobio" trend in the medium. Never one to stick to trends, after an aborted fictional project that featured dialogue written in gibberish, Brown turned to "Louis Riel," yet another audience-challenging work. "Riel" is Brown's interpretive biography of Louis Riel, a real-life 19th-century French-Indian mystic who defied the Canadian government's annexation of what became Manitoba. Crystallizing many of Brown's themes of religion, anti-authoritarianism and madness, "Riel" has become a critical and commercial hit, selling out of its first printing in two months. This past weekend, the 2004 Eisner Awards have nominated...