Word: rivaled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Admittedly the long line of classics the film finds itself up against pose a tough challenge to all involved. While undeniably classic "period" films have been made since Casablanca and Gone With the Wind, such classics are difficult to rival while remaining within the classic war story framework. Moreover, some of the film's predictability is simply a product of historical circumstances. No war film can avoid including film-reels and airraid practices, for example, and it is hard to fault the director for the limited number of responses the circumstance of war creates (Can you imagine a mother rejoicing...
None of this, though, excuses Racing With the Moon for descending into the bubblebath of cliches it ironically prides itself on. Much of the film's failure lies in its attempt to rival its predecessors through imitation. Instead of presenting us with complex, provocative characters who demonstrate a degree of multi-dimensionality, most of the movie seems to be little more than the framework of an American fairy tale...
...problem began in the mid-1970s, when many American users began to realize just how lethal "smack" could be and when a rival drug, cocaine, rose to new prominence. With heroin falling out of fashion, the number of hardcore American users has dropped from a peak of 700,000 a decade ago to 500,000 today. The slippage in this key market coincided with a 1979 drought in the Golden Triangle, the mountainous region where Burma, Thailand and Laos meet. The area has long produced much of the world's supply of poppies, from which opium and heroin...
...think of remote mountains as ideal vacation spots that are very clean, but they're not," declares Johnson. Many isolated areas in the mountains of New England have abnormally high levels of copper, zinc, nickel and cadmium. And the Green Mountains of New Hampshire, seemingly pristine, in fact rival big cities when it comes to lead pollution...
...life. But the good ones are so good, and in such a weird way, that they utterly transfix the eye, while the drawings (and some of the vast outflow of etchings) possess an assurance, a sensuous ferocity that no other living artist could approach, let alone rival...