Word: spacey
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Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) hates his job and the cubicle to which it confines him. He has also come to despise his tense and frigid wife Carolyn (Annette Bening), to mourn the sullen silence that has descended between him and his teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch), to loathe the sterile suburbia where they all try to make emotional ends meet. Lester masturbates a lot, especially when he gets to thinking about his daughter's friend Angela (Mena Suvari), the American Beauty of the title...
...appearance of Hickey, a gregarious salesman who never fails to perk them up. But Hickey arrives with a teetotaler's resolve and a revivalist's mission--to get them to cast off their phony dreams. In this career-making role (it helped make Jason Robards Jr. a star), Kevin Spacey gives the performance of his life. Prowling the stage in a half-crouch, his voice oozing with snake-oil self-confidence, using silences as cagily as the torrent of words, he is funny, charismatic and ultimately shattering...
...complex musical tampering: a bass line from one original song is altered for various other songs whose remaining components are then manipulated and layered on top of other tracks. The result: a melodic game of musical chairs with incestuous rhythms scattered across the album's 27 tracks. Ranging from spacey ambient musings to Bowie-damaged indie pop, it all manages to work. Each listen reveals a new depth to the construction. The less focused interludes last just long enough to make you appreciate the hooks when they finally do snag hold. The Olivia Tremor Control, like their more normal friends...
...complex musical tampering: a bass line from one original song is altered for various other songs whose remaining components are then manipulated and layered on top of other tracks. The results: a melodic game of musical chairs with incestuous rhythms scattered across the album's 27 tracks. Ranging from spacey ambient musings to Bowie-damaged indie pop, it all manages to work. Each listen reveals a new depth to the construction. The less focused interludes last just long enough to make you appreciate the hooks when they finally do snag hold. The Olivia Tremor Control, like their more normal friends...
...movie (and play) demonstrate throughout an irreverent playfulness with language as if it were an assumed meaningless jargon. Spacey's Mickey clarifies the distinction between "flip" and "sarcastic"; Chazz Palmenteri's actor-99.44 percent consisting of repressed fury--seeks some solace in the exact conceptual phrasing of "karma"; and then there's Eddie's kabbalistic Merriam-Webster romp. Some bits are even a little reminiscent of a Coen screenplay, the way the guys repeat and throw this or that phrase around like an exotic football...