Word: portraits
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...back of the jacket cover boasts a quote from Chuck Close, the well known contemporary painter: "Hoban's book is not just the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat but an insightful and devastating portrait of the 1980s art world, its movers and shakers, as well as Basquiat's manipulators, hangers-on, and a precious few genuine friends." Perhaps if this book had been "just the story of Jean-Michel Basquiat" it would have been a more successful biography. This quote, like the biography itself, implies that "Basquiat's manipulators," et al. are, for some reason, more significant or compelling than...
...Bacharach roots Costello in a sound rich with splendid hooks and lush instrumentation. Costello entirely rises to the challenge of matching the Bacharach melodies with poignant musings on heartbreak, love stories laced with the chill of specific, damning truth. On the outstanding "This House is Empty Now," a moving portrait of a man who cannot make sense of the unreliable memories that inscribe his vacant home, Bacharach and Costello write: "Do you recognize the face fixed in that fine silver frame?/Were you really so unhappy then? You never said." In these final three words, Costello and Bacharach condense...
...Howard, the cannon crackers to blow out the lamps of herdie cabs with, the champagne for the chorines [chorus girls]. He was rusticated [suspended] and finally fired from Harvard, so the story goes, for sending to each of a number of professors a chamber pot with the professor's portrait tastefully engraved...
...Williams' richly detailed portrait, Marshall emerges as a born rebel. He showed early talent as a debater and an advocate--at age six he persuaded his mother to simplify the spelling of his name from Thoroughgood--but even more as a class clown and budding playboy. Indeed, it was not until he arrived at Howard University School of Law in 1930 and fell under the spell of its tough-minded dean, Charles Hamilton Houston, that the contours of Marshall's mission began to form...
...gets to do another accent. (This time, it's a sweet mothery voice that seems deliberately constructed to contrast with Zellwegger's slight poutiness.) She also makes the most of juicy monologues where she not only pours out her soul, but also gives us a devastating and unglamorous portrait of a woman rendered helpless by the ravages of disease. But Streep avoids the overacting bug. She never gives us more than what Kate really is--a mother who knows nothing else but the instinct to nurture and love...