Word: oscar
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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BARNEY FRANK Frank may be Congress's own Oscar Wilde--charming and likable even when his words cut deep...
There's wisdom in the Reader's Digest bromide that laughter is the best medicine; we could name two recent invalids whose hearts were lifted by David Sedaris' impression of Billie Holiday singing the Oscar Mayer jingle on NPR. But waking old folks at midnight and making loud mischief seem like a manic camp counselor's idea of fun: indoctrination by comedy. The supporting characters, from the hospital dean (Harve Presnell) to Patch's girlfriend (Monica Potter), are similarly bludgeoned. They begin as skeptics and end, their wills crushed, as dewy believers...
...Oscar Valparaiso has a lot on his plate. No sooner did the young political operative put his boss in the Senate than the guy went nuts, leaving Oscar to sink or swim in a world where pretty much everything has gone wrong. Oceans warmed by climate change have risen so fast that the Dutch are waging Cold War II against Uncle Sam. The devaluation of software to zero (the Chinese post it all free on the Net) snapped the economy like a dry twig. Air Force squads shake down drivers on the highways. Roving "radical proles" terrorize the dwindling bourgeoisie...
...Forrest Gump, Apollo 13), but also gives almost all his movies a moral center. In this age of the outlaw, he defines the ideal norm: he is our best us on our worst day, soldiering on through heartbreak. In Saving Private Ryan, for which he may earn his third Oscar as the tough, paternal Captain Miller, Hanks has a moment when the burden of leadership in war has nearly broken him. He walks over a hillside from his fractious men (far enough away that no one will see him) and sobs (so softly that no one will hear...
...film's basic plot--a bright misfit goes undercover to save his people from foreign domination--it's pure Mulan. You'll also find echoes of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 essay in panoramic kitsch, The Ten Commandments (including the climactic Red Sea parting), and its Oscar-laden sibling, the 1959 Ben-Hur (including the chariot race). All are about two young men, raised as brothers, whose proud convictions set them on a moral and political collision course...