Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Like the jazz it depicts, "Kansas City" comes across as an effortless delight guided by an underlying discipline. This fine work lives and breathes before our eyes in the hands of master director Robert Altman, who uses the film less as a conventionally plot-driven vehicle than as a slow Sunday ride through whatever catches his fancy. The result is a movie that succeeds on many levels: as a historical snapshot of a vibrant city, as a tragic dual portrait of two women from different walks of life, even just as a scrapbook of moments, riding on jazz rhythms...
...main plot thread off which Altman works involves Blondie O'Hara (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a punchy, fast-talking gal looking to get her husband Johnny (Dermot Mulroney) back from a gangster, Seldom Seen (Harry Belafonte), whom he foolishly irked. Kidnapping Carolyn Stilton (Miranda Richardson), the doped-up wife of a prominent politician, arises as the logical solution: she hopes to force Mr. Stilton to sic the police on the gangster...
...faced conspirators and, according to sources, a veritably ballistic Gingrich. Not to mention some exposed buttocks. "Armey's people are now denying he was ever a part of it," says Carney, "thus laying it on Paxon." Paxon, meanwhile, has taken the fall while insisting his role in the plot has been grossly overstated. "The interesting dynamic to emerge here is the martyrdom of Bill Paxon," says Carney. "He was loyal to Gingrich for a long time, and by resigning quickly, he might escape the fallout from this. When the end does come for Gingrich, it could well be Paxon...
Dramatic effects may be required for Thompson to give new life to a story that so far has proved nothing more than the need for campaign-finance reform. Nor has the tantalizing possibility of high-level government espionage materialized. Reports of a Beijing plot to reach deeply into American politics are sketchy, based on intercepts of telephone calls to the Chinese embassy that intelligence analysts say can be interpreted variously...
...This plot was no joke. Many Commusicals were censored for having a decadent Westernized tone. As an officious official bellows to a young dancer in Carnival Night (U.S.S.R., 1957), "We want to raise the consciousness of our workers. But what do you expect to raise with naked legs?" Only about 40 Soviet-bloc musicals were made in 40 years, from The Jolly Fellows to the glossy, ginchy No Cheating, Darling (G.D.R., 1973). Yet these films brought vigorous fun to an audience starved for it. Their makers deserved to be named Heroes of the Soviet People...