Word: mythic
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...nation needs its mythic heroes, and no nation needs them more than the U.S. at this moment. But Lincoln scholarship has advanced since Sandburg's day. The Lincoln whose ambition was described by a contemporary as "a little motor constantly running," the Lincoln of the migraines and the immobilizing self-doubts, is a man who might speak more vigorously and with deeper appeal to a modern audience...
...America, financed a counterculture, and spawned a $2 billion industry. Its principal gift to those who were young in the 1960s was to provide a common means of expression-a common music, a common language, even a kind of cathartic theater in which a Janis Joplin assumed almost mythic dimensions as a tragic heroine and Dylan strolled the stage like an Orpheus. It is no secret that rock's classic era is gone forever, along with the social bonds that nurtured it. The current fragmentation of the rock audience certifies that. In fairness, it must be added that...
Baron "Bud" Asher is one of the mythic figures of my home town. Since he arrived in the mid-fifties after a career as a 5 ft. 9 in. scrub quarterback who ran the opposition's plays against Wally Butts' University of Georgia varsity, Asher has never stopped running. Asher makes Sammy Glick look like a turtle with shinsplints...
...actors (among whom are John Philip Law, as Sinbad, and Caroline Munro, as the flimsily dressed slave girl who is along on the voyage largely for scenic purposes) are not quite so animated as the mythic creatures surrounding them. The movie is short on talk, except for the windbag wizard (Tom Baker) who plays the villain, and long on action, quite the proper proportion for entertainments like this. Sinbad is light, silly fun, and kids will probably appreciate both the skillful technique of the fantasy and the fact that the film makers have had the good sense not to include...
TAKING ONESELF TOO seriously is always a gamble. Failures that lesser writers could get away with leave gaping holes in Hawkes's work. Allert's wife, Ursula, for example, never quite achieves mythic stature and threatens to remain little more than a parody, lounging about in a state of perpetual langour that is supposed to suggest sensuality. Hawkes only makes things worse with his clumsy explanation...