Word: squalors
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first back-to-backs were completed in 1802. Consisting of three rooms, one above another, they were built around a central courtyard and each housed upward of 10 people. They became a byword for squalor until 1966 when they were finally declared unfit for habitation. Their rehabilitation began in 1988 when they were listed as historical monuments, and restoration of 54 Inge Street was initiated by the Birmingham Conservation Trust...
...true that Marcos gets her say in the film as never before, but the effect is often spectacularly self-destructive. Sure, it might have looked like callousness when she pranced around a countryside of squalor and misery bedecked in jewels and glamorous gowns, but Marcos insists in the film that she was doing it only for the masses: "When I became First Lady and I would be meeting kings and queens, it would take me an hour to dress up. But when I went to the provinces, it would take me an hour and a half or two. Double...
Amidst this squalor, he smiles...
...check, letting them loose in small, startling bursts. Sanaa Lathan is winning and funny as Walter's headstrong sister. Former Cosby Show star Phylicia Rashad, dumpy and nearly unrecognizable as Walter's mother, breaks through the cliches to create an unsentimental portrait of moral strength in the midst of squalor. But nearly every detail (from the mellow jazz musical interludes to a 10-year-old boy's wince in pain as his mama pulls a comb through his hair) seems exactly right in Kenny Leon's finely wrought production...
...dynamics of the military are merely extensions of politics, the film is an indictment of the general social situation it depicts as well. Kubrick's camerawork brilliantly expresses the varying cultural vacuums in which his characters trek, from the vertiginous ballrooms of the military elite to the squat squalor of the trenches. And the acting he evokes from a cast largely composed of has-beens and second-rates is exemplary...