Word: preachments
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...whatever is possible through preachment, aid and sanctions to encourage the spread of democracy. The most destructive ethnic explosions usually have occurred under repressive regimes. In contrast, secession movements in Quebec and Scotland have generally concentrated on peaceful persuasion. Democratic Canada and Britain have given Quebecois and Scots nonviolent ways in which to voice their angers and aspirations...
...wants us to see this tormented body as a metaphor for a tormented body politic; the wildly successful British advertising business may be to the Thatcherian age what imperialism was to the Victorian. But here Robinson sets down his hot satirical lance and slaps a soppy poultice of preachment onto the end of his movie. It proves to be a 19th century home remedy for an ailment he has convinced us may be curable only by more up-to-date and radical means...
...Aliens' originality results from the fact that the filmmakers have not confined themselves to the conventions of the horror genre. Without strain, and with a kind of manic good cheer, they meld into the film elements from many another pop tradition: action, adventure, even military comedy, anti- Establishment preachment and a well-taken satire on the yuppie mentality...
...even after Splash and Cocoon, ain't these guys, yet. When he lets his film relax into hip facetiousness, and when Keaton parades his elfin jock swagger, Gung Ho is agreeable. But its relentless stereotyping of the Japanese provokes winces and worse. Its tone swings violently from pratfall to preachment, from an indictment of featherbed laziness to an extended beer-commercial celebration of the mythical American worker. Perhaps the brand of canny moral exuberance that Gung Ho finally prescribes is available these days only to Presidents, evangelists and coaches in the N.C.A.A. Final Four. On the big screen it seems...
...that moment, it becomes clear that Pravda is not merely lamenting the newspapers that are but pining for newspapers that might be. The play is not foremost a preachment, however, but a superb high-energy entertainment, with a cast of 33, lavishly detailed sets, throbbing music and an urgent, propulsive style set by Co-Author Hare, who directed. It recalls the morally assertive best of warmhearted Broadway satires like The Solid Gold Cadillac in every regard save one: Pravda does not and, given its bitter convictions, could not have a happy ending...