Word: shadows
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...original that one immediately realizes that one is in the hands of a master. It always seems to be late afternoon in the film, that lazy peculiarly Southern California lighting, or else it is a misty night. The surfaces are always reflected in some gas-lit glow--a shadow of the "real" California of travel posters and television shows. Director Ivan Passer has given his characters enough personalities to be interesting (Cutter is constantly mimicking Ahab), but more often than not he resists making them fit together too neatly...
...corporate treasurers have been postponing bond sales and covering their money needs on a week-to-week and month-to-month basis in the short-term market. In June alone, business demand for such credit jumped at an annual rate of 32%, to $319 billion. Moneymen speak of a "shadow bond calendar" of $10 billion to $15 billion in potential corporate debt that has been waiting to surge into the long-term bond market once interest rates come down...
...have the whole story in Layman's The Shadow Man. Layman's book is the best of its kind around today, and even without the help of Lillian Hellman, he has pieced together the life in a readable, if somewhat stodgy account. It's workmanlike biography of an unworkmanlike man, with none of the flair that marked Hammett's writing and none of the hard sensibilities he made so popular. In some respects, it's not nearly as interesting as Hammett's fiction, since Hammett's Ops have more to say about the state of things in the urban steamvat...
...most haunting speeches Shepard has ever written (which is unfortunately undermined by the music.) Niles and Paulette wander through the music and madness, acting out a ritual exorcism of his personalities, Pable and Louis find themselves sucked further and further in. You can drive a truck twixt the shadow and the reality, Shepard seems to be saying, and it's not a question of going over the deep end since there really isn't any difference between the two. The line between sanity and reality is just a membrane--and we are all the hapless victims of osmosis...
Edwards' script follows the pattern of his direction. He strikes on target at the beginning, setting up his figures to be knocked into the dust. The shadow that Tinsel Town casts on the lives of his characters, the absurd system of priorities that makes an angry man quote box office figures to his wife in the heat of the argument: These are the moments when Edwards nears his goal. Once the focus shifts to Farmer alone, the tone of the film becomes skewed, strained. The film cannot survive on its own, when it's not pontificating on the medium...