Word: semis
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...career rises from 1943, when the collector and gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim commissioned him to paint a mural for her Manhattan apartment, to the early '50s--no more than 10 years. The final four years of his life brought a string of pictorial failures and, at best, semi-successes: no talent could survive the alcoholic battering Pollock gave his. And then at age 44, a fatal car crash, after which the rest is the kind of pop hagiology that America reserves for its culture heroes...
...simpler terms, Pleasantville is about two semi-cynical '90s teenagers who get zapped--via the admittedly silly means of a magical TV repairman played by Don Knotts--into a black-and-white '50s TV show called "Pleasantville," reminiscent of Ozzie and Harriet. Once there, the brother and sister try to play along with the "Honey, I'm home!" fakeness of the town, but they can't withhold all of their real world sensibilities. As the ideas they bring with them (art, sex, danger) leak into the town, color starts appearing on roses, on houses and eventually on people. Not knowing...
...prime example is "Strangelove." The song begins with a rousing synthesized beat and dives right into such glum, semi-introspective lyrics as "I give in to sin because I like to practice what I preach." If you listen to Depeche Mode over and over again without ever listening to the lyrics (I highly recommend this), they sound like the perfect band. But when you take your ears off cruise control, what you're hearing are songs of two varieties: pretentious self-loathing and nasty love stories. Verdict: great sound, questionable lyrics...
While Practical Magic initially left me with a smile, it quickly turned to that stomachache you get after eating too much candy. The sight of Bullock and Kidman in a semi-lesbian erotic scene may arouse some, but eventually, it is just one more cheap trick to keep us in our seats. To give the flick a little credit, it never promises to be Citizen Kane, and it provides some good laughs and a feelgood finale. If you want a brain-candy slumber party movie, rent Practical Magic, by all means. Just don't expect it to work any magic...
Kevin next goes through a detailed explanation for the loading of the semi-automatic handguns. He shows us how to hold the gun (both thumbs to the side of the handle) so that we don't get a chunk taken out of our thumb by the slide and how to fire it--"squeeze the trigger, don't pull." He's good at his job: patient even when repeatedly reminding us not to point our guns...