Word: sci-fi
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...never, ever lose the conception that the individual on stage has offered a waiting room-full of somber patients dire diagnoses that can only be delivered behind closed doors and thick desk. His tone borders on that of the tirelessly tireless banner-holders of American Progress: those great 50s sci-fi scientists intoning the mysteries of the future today. It's an admirable feat of dedicated characterization, and Shrier is here nothing if not consistent...
...whose holdings include the Home Shopping Network and a stake in Ticketmaster, struck a deal for nearly $4.1 billion with Seagram Co. that lays a foundation for his own entertainment empire. Diller, 55, will pay Seagram $1.2 billion in cash plus HSN stock for Seagram's USA and Sci-Fi cable channels and most of its Universal TV operations. Among them: the acclaimed cops-and-lawyers show Law and Order and schlock hit Xena: Warrior Princess...
Still, one has to admire a lot of his refusals. Niccol doesn't turn his film into a big chase or gunfight. He has serious matters on his mind and attends to them soberly, with the humanistic intensity--naively instructional yet rather touchingly earnest--that marked the sci-fi of the 1950s, when it was widely discovered that the future might not be all it was cracked...
...Gattaca sucks you in visually, drawing attention away from the dramatic flaws. There's a cool, postmodern bleakness to Niccol's vision, and a deftly understated mingling of present-day genetic and computer/technological paranoia, which proves more effective than a flashier sci-fi approach would have been. Niccol also has a way with suspended images, and his most inspired moments, in fact, are purely visual: a pool of blood, spreading from an unseen source, blots the frigidly hygienic, monochromatic polish of Gattaca; a conventionally romantic evening at a piano recital turns suddenly surreal with the appearance of an immaculate...
...sound that might be described as big-band noir, with blaring horns and desperate, almost manic vocals. Another, Half Day Closing, ends with Gibbons' eerie wail twisting wraithlike into the ether. And Humming opens with a portentous Moog-synthesizer solo that seems borrowed, in mood, from a '50s sci-fi film. The songs on Portishead have one unifying feature: they all seem constructed on a wasteland of despair. Producer-songwriter Geoff Barrow, who, along with Gibbons, forms the core of Portishead, says simply, "I'm not a very optimistic person, really...