Word: static
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...true, however, that Japan had been culturally static until then. Japan's ancient imperial capital Kyoto represented the classic division of old Japanese power: court, samurai, priests. It continued to exert a great influence on the country's art. But in Edo, a more secular and even demotic imagination began to assert itself--marked, writes Singer, by "bold, sometimes brash expression...and a playful outlook on life in general." This happened because Japanese society, in the new capital, became somewhat more open to change. Not very much, but a little, and then a little more. The once despised merchants...
Strangely enough, Wait Until Dark is one of the few plays that actually works better as a film. Just ask Quentin Tarantino--this summer, he starred in a miserably static Broadway production of the play that paled in comparison to the genuinely frightening 1967 film starring Audrey Hepburn. In addition to its complex roles, which require subtle yet stead-fast interpretation, it is an immensely technical production filled with lighting and staging tricks that require consistently perfect timing. Thus, when the Adams House Drama Society announced that it was staging Wait Until Dark in the claustrophobic Pool Theater, eyebrows were...
...always one step ahead of her stalkers (and Rattey's pensive pauses and subtle gesturing give us the sense that her character is always thinking, always plotting). As Gloria, Suzy's teenage helper, Kate Johnsen '01 is appropriately petulant (though she is unfortunately saddled with a number of hackneyed, static lines). Nuccio captures the "teddy-bear" duplicity of Mike Talman while Ruiz, hair slicked back and comb in tow, hams it up for laughs as the incompetent yet menacing Carlino...
...answer is obvious, and writer-director Gary Ross can be fairly accused of stacking the deck in making the static utopia of Pleasantville seem not only narrow but also inane and empty--certainly not in the least desirable, even when contrasted with the more unattractive features of the '90s in the opening sequence. Pleasantville is moreover, when one comes down to it, a very weird and potentially unsettling world of doubtful reality. Perhaps as a consequence, the movie is guilty of certain logical gaps and inconsistencies; for instance, how do the Pleasantvillers know what colors are when they begin...
...appear regal, the frames are often etched in with the figure, the allegorical prints are dramatic because of the contrast given to points of the artist's interest, and the everyday scenes are all recorded in concise detail. What all of these themes possess as motif are their underlying static feeling. These prints are immobile; the figures in them are frozen. Today, a viewer cannot relate to these scenes of the past through the mind and eyes of a 16th century village person, therefore, there is no dynamic between...