Word: starke
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Bush Administration prefers to paint the War on Terror in stark terms of good and evil, but the reality is not all terror suspects are considered equal. That much was clear on the same day that the nation solemnly recalled the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, when a federal magistrate recommended freeing a man being held on immigration charges who is also awaiting retrial in Venezuela for the bombing of a Cuban airliner 30 years ago that resulted in the death of all aboard, including the Cuban national fencing team...
...between conflicting loyalties. He began his career as a Southern conservative, celebrating the agrarian traditions of the region, but found himself fascinated by the vulgar, driving (and possibly transformative) energy of Huey Long, Louisiana's legendary Governor--Senator-- presidential candidate, who was the model for his book's Willie Stark. Novel and film are narrated by Jack Burden (Jude Law), scion of the now enervated Louisiana ruling class, who, as a newspaper reporter and then as a gubernatorial lackey, is both the author's surrogate and the audience's--a man who wants to be an ironic observer of events...
...film, as in Warren's novel, Burden is Stark's equal, and the restoration of that balance is important to the movie's success. Commentators on Warren's work often say that it's a study in how power corrupts, and that Willie is essentially a good man ruined by dictatorial depravity. Sean Penn strikes that note, playing him with a kind of bantam-rooster energy--and good-ole-boy charm. But something else is present, thanks in part to Zaillian's alertness to Warren's nuances. Willie has what Huey Long surely did not: a primitive sense of original...
...Warren, despite his penchant for overripe prose, created an indelible portrait of the American demagogue. And, yes, we acknowledge there is a touch of Willie Stark in every politician who catches the national eye. The line between idealism and opportunism is ever thin as paper. But in Willie's relentless, utterly insatiable appetites there is something beyond the powers of political commentary or literary criticism to convey. It is much more than a conventional ambition, a presidential dream. Lots of men entertain that fantasy. What drives him is an unacknowledged anarchy of the soul. There is no reason why Willie...
...very handsome movie unfold at a stately but not self-important pace, that its tragedy is located not in the semicomic hurly-burly of politics but in the dankness of the heart. What's being said here is that politics is always, at least temporarily, reformable--Willie Stark, for a moment, had that power--but that irrational need is beyond governance...