Word: smalltown
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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From New York to smalltown Michigan to the English countryside, the three deadpan artists whose short films are featured in the Harvard Film Archive series Two Mikes Don't Make a Wright seem to be able to laugh at anything. If there is one feature that unites the shorts, it is a strange mixture of comedy and horror that reaches its crescendo in the final film. Two Mikes starts dark, turns black and gets blacker...
...give us a good show-tune conception of China. Venturing onto what the program tells us is "Main Street, U.S.A." (another Disney reference), the number "Only One Can Be the Best" sounds like it's being played by an unsynchronized high school band--we wonder if this sound characterizes smalltown America. In an impressive conclusion, Peters presents a charming ballad and Irish jig ("Chasin' the Rainbow"), beautifully sung by the poor Irish immigrant Maureen (Wynne Love). It is exciting to know that all of this music has been written by a Harvard undergrad; too bad we aren't told more...
...fourth track, "Shuffle It All," with its swelling Hammond organ a la The Black Crowes, captures the resigned realism of a life of loneliness and impermanence, such as a young Jeff Isbell must have experienced on his way from smalltown Indiana to the rock underworld of Los Angeles...
Watkin pointed out that the Lozano family tookthe trouble to bring their children from a smalltown 25 miles away...
...violence is an epidemic in this country. In too many cities, the news each night reports another death by a gun. As dealers push out in search of new addicts, Smalltown, U.S.A., is introduced to the mindless gun violence fostered by the drug trade...