Word: one
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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DIED. KEN W. CLAWSON, 63, director of communications for the Nixon White House in its final months; of a heart attack; in New Orleans. A staunch loyalist before and after the resignation, he once told the New York Times, "I'm just one of Richard Nixon's spear carriers and proud...
...one need bother mocking or pitying the Irish; they do such a good job of it themselves. Frank McCourt beautifully juggled contempt and sympathy in his memoir of growing up poor and wet in Limerick in the '30s and '40s, before squandering the goodwill he had accrued with the taint of 'Tis (it'll be a while before that sour screed is filmed). Parker, who did right by the Irish in The Commitments, has a go at the impossible task of adapting Angela's Ashes and trying to satisfy all those who loved the book so much that McCourt...
...vitality of remembered truth. Is Frank hungry? He licks a newspaper for the residual grease of the chips it held. Is he sopping? He steps in more puddles than Gene Kelly in Singin' in the Rain. (Ten years the family rented the same flooded ground floor, and no one thought to lay a plank from the doorway to the stairs.) The three boys playing Frank at 7, 11 and 15 are fine. They create a collective portrait of a child tough enough to survive a horrendous youth and a man brave enough to recall...
...could it have failed? With a smugness that smothers the actors' energy and obliterates the historical reality. Welles is a pompous oaf, and Houseman his toady. The rich are scheming, the poor artists cliches of do-gooder striving. These are caricatures drawn so violently that one sees blotches of ink instead of quick, deft lines. Perhaps, in the long view, we are all idiots. But we don't need a 60-year perspective to see Robbins' attitude revealed in all its meanness of spirit. If he hated these people so, why did he waste his time and ours putting them...
...film may confuse those unfamiliar with Chinese history, but never mind. Just pay heed to the glorious moviemaking. There is one scene that haunts the heart: an ethereally beautiful blind girl (Xun Zhou) kills herself after the assassin has eradicated the rest of her family. Few directors can create such indelible imagery; Chen does it in nearly every frame...