Word: portrayal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...wish I could offer George W. Bush some advice about how to fend off efforts to portray him as a dimwit, but even Dan Quayle rejected the only slogan I came up with when he had a similar problem: "Definitely Not the Dumbest Guy in the Deke House." Political pundits are warning us that the public is in danger of seeing all the presidential candidates as caricatures--McCain as a hothead, for instance, and Gore as a manlike object and Forbes as a terminal dork. Just who might be responsible for leaving the voters with these impressions...
...choice to portray Tom Ripley as a gay man is risky, and not only for Matt Damon's career. As a man capable of murder on a bad day (don't worry, I'm not really giving anything away), a gay Thomas Ripley might become some terrible variation on the mythic self-hating homosexual serial killed--a queasy Andrew Cunanan done up in old-fashioned clothes. But the change actually produces all kinds of new tensions that deepen the emotional weight of the story. Tom's confused sexuality is just another expression of his place outside the privileged world...
...beauty of Glengarry is that Mamet presents his characters not merely as the machinations they often portray, but as people with feelings, families, and vulnerabilities that are shared and exploited. Here the character of James Lingk (Joe Gfaller '00), is essential. As a reluctant client of Roma's, Gfaller's uneasiness and pitiable entreaties serve to reveal the cruelty of the system and all its deception...
...after episode, with no plot whatsoever. Frank's siblings die at the rate of about one every ten minutes, but the only emotion these deaths manage to evoke is indifference. Along the way the film manages to completely squander Emily Watson as Angela. She makes a valiant effort to portray Angela as a tough woman who's not too proud to beg for her children, but wasted are her sharp, delicate eyes and wonderfully expressive mouth. In fact, the occasional, accidental spurts of beautiful acting she is allowed only serve to frustrate the viewer even more as she struggles...
Next year Hoffman will portray his first romantic lead in David Mamet's State and Main, opposite Rebecca Pidgeon, but he scoffs at the notion of Hollywood stardom. He will, he says, continue living in New York City, doing theater (he'll make his Broadway debut in a revival of Sam Shepard's True West in February) and worrying about his love life. "I date," he says. "But it's a nightmare. You're traveling all the time. I gotta figure it out, because I want to get married and have kids someday." Listening, Amy? There's still time...