Word: stoning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Mikhail Gorbachev. The name, the beaming, birthmarked visage and the outstretched, crowd-caressing hand have become so familiar in the past 33 months that it is difficult to remember the man's predecessors.Vague images come to mind of stone-faced figures frozen in mid-frown atop the Lenin Mausoleum. Gargoyles in fur hats. Perhaps Gorbachev's most obvious accomplishment is that he has reinvented the idea of a Soviet leader. Virtually everything about his country and its place in world affairs seems less ponderous, less opaque than it did before he became General Secretary of the Communist Party...
...mansion. The crackle of splintering wood emanates from the broken windows. A bathroom sink of heroic proportions has been plunked down on the overgrown lawn, and a man is chipping at a graffiti-painted wall with hammer and chisel. "Alllll right! " he says with a smile. "This stone is so wet it's going to come right off with a jackhammer...
...never really in doubt, so streamlined and predictable are the characters. The women in Bud's life are there primarily as temptations. His broker and lawyer pals are either consciences or bad company. The film seems intended as a blend of morality play and classical satire -- Everyman meets Volpone. Stone always comes at you with big dreams and nightmares; he wants the first and last word on every subject he touches, whether Central America (Salvador), Viet Nam (Platoon) or Wall Street. This time he works up a salty sweat to end up nowhere, like a triathlete on a treadmill...
...Brooks is a subtler creator than Oliver Stone -- 18 years of writing and producing nifty TV shows like Mary Tyler Moore, The Associates and Taxi taught him to coax comedy from character instead of tossing it grenade-like under the viewer's seat, and Tom Grunick is a far subtler creature of malice than Bud or Gekko. But Brooks is agitated about the state of network news. He is unsettled by the marriage of the comely face and the bottom line. He is disturbed by the new big boys on Media Avenue -- not just in the news, and not just...
...J.M.W. Turner collection. Stirling created a well- proportioned and handsome set of viewing rooms with a crisply formal yet amusing exterior, highlighted by a cutaway pediment entrance. As for the National Gallery, after several abortive efforts, including the "carbuncle" debacle, it has settled for restraint: a safe, classically modern stone-faced design by American Architect Robert Venturi for its much needed $63 million extension...