Word: presentational
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ignore The Royal Family's multiple mirrors and just present it as a straightforward domestic comedy with Broadway trappings--as, with the exception of a couple of entrances, the Loeb production does--then the problem evaporates. This approach loses some of the subtlety of the play-about-actors, but then, a George Kaufman comedy hardly demands subtle treatment. Modest ambitions save the Loeb's Royal Family from becoming a grandiose statement about "the theatre" and salvage an evening's entertainment out of the alluring labyrinth of mirrors...
Drummond said right turns will not be legal on a red light where there is an exclusive pedestrian cross-walk, or where large numbers of pedestrians are normally present...
What makes Kramer stand out, even in this often heady company, is its lack of cant or trendy attitudes of any stripe. Rather than tailor his characters to represent the various party lines of present-day sexual politics, Benton allows the issues to develop freely and inferentially from the unruly passions of his story. Kramer avoids explicit feminist debates, and it does not provide heroes or villains of either sex. By such omissions, it departs dramatically from films like An Unmarried Woman and Alice, which feature warm, wholly sympathetic heroines and men who are usually either bastards or saints. Kramer...
...Cart Man uses few words, The Story of an English Village (Atheneurm; $7.95) is totally mute. Still, John S. Goodall's watercolors are eloquent enough to carry the progress of a British town from medieval beginnings to its present state. In other hands, the use of half pages overlaid on full ones might be a gimmick. But Goodall's visual narrative is so controlled, and his costumes and customs so accurate, that history assumes a personality. Moving by lively steps, it arranges hemlines and coats, advances from midwives to doctors, from town criers to village schools...
Once Tutankhamun returned from the tomb, it was inevitable that publishers would discover the Nile. Several have done so, simultaneously vulgarizing the past and present. But two new books offer a deep understanding of how people looked and thought a world ago. In Mummies Made in Egypt (Crowell; $8.95), Aliki unravels the secrets of ba, the ancient Egyptian concept of the soul, and ka, the invisible twin of the deceased. Both ba and ka wandered after death, and they could only return to a recognizable body-hence the art of preservation. Aliki's crisp narrative and delicate artwork never...