Word: soaped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...softener to the abrasive material. Each fills its sound track with '60s pop songs, as if Viet Nam were just another trip down nostalgia lane, like high school mixers and afternoons at the malt shop. Both have taken a predominantly male experience and leavened it with female characters and soap-opera story lines closer to Dallas than Saigon...
...basic improv theater, meaning that its members don't discuss specific plots before they go on stage; they take groups of three words or themes as their points of reference. Friday night the actors in the 16-member ensemble will spoof topics from TV talk show announcers to soap operas to docudramas, and Saturday night's Chez Cliche should feature, you guessed it, tried and true murder mystery themes...
Mebbe not. Yet Lonesome Dove rides rings around the overstuffed soap operas that usually pass for "epics" along Broadcast Row. Larry McMurtry's fat novel has been brought to TV -- by writer Bill Wittliff and director Simon Wincer -- with sweep, intelligence and sheer storytelling drive. Firmly anchoring the film is Robert Duvall's moving performance as the wry, philosophical ex-lawman Augustus McCrae. Tommy Lee Jones provides stern counterpoint as McCrae's partner, Woodrow F. Call. Dozens of finely etched characters surround them: a roguish ex-Ranger turned gambler (Robert Urich); a prostitute looking for escape (Diane Lane); a wimpy...
With Matador (1986) and Law of Desire (1987), Almodovar displayed his brazen assurance of style and vaulted from comic realism to soap-operatic mannerism. Matador is a contemporary vampire story: an ex-bullfighter and a woman lawyer, believing that death is the ultimate climax, impale each victim on the cold steel of their lust. Law of Desire draws a bent triangle: a gay movie director, his transsexual sister (Maura) and her adopted child's rightful mother (played by a Spanish drag queen). Revelations of murder, incest, suicide and lotsa hot sex follow, but the tone remains knowing, tender. As Matador...
...good sign: a long queue just inside a hardware store. Obviously, something scarce is available. It turns out to be laundry soap, brown waxy bars that people must grate into washing machines. I join the line, No. 68. "We never used to stand in line for soap," says Alexandra Vasivna, a Moscow pensioner and No. 69. "I don't know what's happened." I hold her place while she sees how much is left. "Nine cartons," she reports. "I don't know if we'll get any." A man in front grumbles, "We would if people didn't hoard...