Word: niccol
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Writer-director Andrew Niccol, a New Zealander up out of commercials and making his debut in features, is less successful with the big things than he is with these little ones. His vision of a heavily sanitized and overrational future is perhaps inevitably more chilly than chilling. And since emotion has been bred out of most of the people he's concerned with, the movie's relationships--notably a romance between Vincent and a co-worker played by Uma Thurman--tend to be distant and not very involving...
...intriguing premise that goes a long way toward making an impressive though uneven feature film debut for writer-director Andrew Niccol. Gattaca, unfortunately, fails to explore the subtler ramifications and genuinely disturbing socio-economic implications of the situation it introduces. This lack is less than satisfactorily replaced by the individual drama it centers on instead--it's the old, old story of the lone hero who refuses to play the hand that's dealt...
...Gattaca sucks you in visually, drawing attention away from the dramatic flaws. There's a cool, postmodern bleakness to Niccol's vision, and a deftly understated mingling of present-day genetic and computer/technological paranoia, which proves more effective than a flashier sci-fi approach would have been. Niccol also has a way with suspended images, and his most inspired moments, in fact, are purely visual: a pool of blood, spreading from an unseen source, blots the frigidly hygienic, monochromatic polish of Gattaca; a conventionally romantic evening at a piano recital turns suddenly surreal with the appearance of an immaculate...
...startling thing about the Lang affair is that he was not purveying pornography, or even mildly racy novels. He was merely introducing his students to the Poetics by Aristotle and The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli as an aid to their study of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Lang, 55, a ten-year teaching veteran, is a man determined to challenge his students, pitted against a school system that wants him to take things easy...
Among works still awaiting restoration are the Sacrifice of Isaac by Allori (Church of San Niccolò Oltrarno), Bronzino's Christ Descending into Limbo (Museum of Santa Croce), and Ghiberti's and Pisano's bronze doors from the Florence Baptistry-which restorers may have to coat with a transparent synthetic resin, now under research in Italy, to protect them from worse damage by air pollution...