Word: parallels
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Replay it once more. A close second to the Russians after the compulsories, the U.S. women's gymnasts had moved into first during Tuesday night's finals on the strength of six nearly flawless performances on the uneven parallel bars and another six strong ones on the balance beam. They held their own on the floor exercise, and with one event remaining, the vault, the first U.S. team gymnastics gold medal ever was all but assured, barring disaster...
...Schumacher paints by the numbers, but he does it well, guiding the movie along the parallel tracks of escalation (in court, out of court) that the novel handily provides. From the very beginning, following the careening path of the redneck's pick-up truck, we feel it's rolled right off the pages on to the screen. Readers of the book might become bored because of its own decidedly cinematic feel: Ruby-style shooting of suspects, Ku Klux Klan marches against Carl Lee's supporters and the like...
...well to basic visual motifs, which Schumacher seems to realize. Doors burst open at every turn, Jackson's Car Lee finds himself behind screens or bars before any shooting has happened, and light--red, white, blue--bathes people over the course of the movie. Events in the film's parallel tracks (those related to defense, and those to the prosecution) often occur in discrete chunks, placed side by side for quick, crude comparison. Here come the Klan members; there go Carl Lee's supporters. Or as the movie would have it: T-shirts saying either "Free Carl" or "Fry Carl...
...more cartoonish this movie gets--a coffee pot bubbles among the complicated looking test-tubes involved in the cloning process--the better it becomes. As Doug, and Doug, and Doug, and Doug try to solve all of the original's problems, they find that the logistics of their parallel existences cause more difficulties than they can handle...
...novels, I started John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy and got through the first book (The 42nd Parallel) and half the second book (Nineteen Nineteen) before letting my attention wander. The books are heavily influenced by history and are not quick reads. I'll return to them later in the summer, when my mind will be better prepared to soak them...