Word: roped
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...enough, as we are introduced to Robert (McGregor), a recently laid-off janitor with a really bad haircut. After having been replaced by a cheap robot and dumped by his gum-chewing girlfriend within the space of a few hours, our shaggy protagonist is at the end of his rope. During a trippy-freak-out-on-the-bed scene (which bears a strong resemblance to the trippy-freak-out-on-the-bed scene in Trainspotting), Robert comes up with a solution: kidnap his ex-boss' daughter Celine (a painfully typecast Diaz), drive away and improvise from there...
...night the body was found, 500 people from the boy's community packed into an auditorium in Cambridge. It is a measure of our progress as a civilization that the 500 did not get a rope and march on the police station. Instead, they listened to a local child psychiatrist, who told them, "It's beyond our comprehension." The boy's father, a fire fighter, said he hoped the men would be executed. My own mental sentence upon them (before I calmed down) included execution, but was more vivid and, so to speak, Islamic. Massachusetts has outlawed the death penalty...
...latest Janet, on her new album The Velvet Rope, is omnivorous, sexually and musically: folk, hip-hop, man, woman, it's all in play. Her basic sound, however, is the same--her small, soft voice surrounded by imposing, muscular dance beats. The album has more than a few striking moments, from Vanessa-Mae's rubbed-raw violin solo on the title track to the brutal frankness of What About, in which a woman rejects a marriage proposal from an abusive boyfriend. Jackson occasionally relies too heavily on others--Got 'Til It's Gone draws smartly on Joni Mitchell...
When one of the climbers falls and hangs for his life by a rope, Annaud seems determined not to cash in on the moment's cliffhanger potential. There's no music to augment the tension, no exciting swooping pans--only matter-of-fact, straight-on shots of the climbers on both ends of the rope, accompanied by the sounds of scraping and strained breathing. Later, too, as the action proceeds through unavoidably beautiful terrain, Pitt and other characters are shown on uninspiring rocky stretches or in close-quartered caves, tents and villages...
Nevertheless, the California campus was trying to be as New York blase as possible. While the most laid-back school in the country started looking more like backstage at a Puff Daddy concert (metal detectors, guys in fatigues, and a laminated, neck-rope pass for everyone--students, parents, faculty, press), people tried to act cool. The school administration will say nothing besides one well-crafted sentence about "respecting the privacy of all our students." Chelsea's residence staff has been trained in press handling (tell them to leave, then call the police) to the point where they seem unfazed. Even...