Word: stridently
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...deliberative Miller admits that some of the problem was "self-inflicted." He says he hadn't seen the film on a big screen until last Thursday, and he agrees that it was overwhelming. "The movie was far too loud," he says. "And the voices were far too shrill and strident... I'm relieved I have the opportunity to get this [reworked], because it would have destroyed the film." To lighten the tone, some of the score will be softened. Miller says he is even tuning down the clank when Farmer Hoggett falls into a well, because "people thought...
...Guido's could effectively resist totalitarianism at its most terrible. But it cannot--unless, of course, you rewrite the past and in the process travesty tragedy. The witnesses to the Holocaust--its living victims--inevitably grow fewer every year. The voices that would deny it ever took place remain strident. The newer generations hurry heedlessly into the future. In this climate, turning even a small corner of this century's central horror into feel-good popular entertainment is abhorrent. Sentimentality is a kind of fascism too, robbing us of judgment and moral acuity, and it needs to be resisted. Life...
...Pupil would seem to be a thriller that hovers somewhere between tolerable and entertaining. Scenes in the style of Stephen King, normally complex and intriguing, are here sickening. The ethics of making Dussander (a former SS officer) the interesting character and his strident accusers the bland and vapid ones are, of course, also questionable. This said, Ian McKellan may be given credit for giving the masterful performance one expects of him. Todd Renfro's acting (as the boy who discovers Dussander) is generally bland and flat, more appropriate to a sitcom, or an after-school special, than the thriller that...
...movie that seems to pride itself on confronting its audience with the fact of the Holocaust nonetheless stops short of this triviality, which makes one consider how real the Holocaust is for this movie, and so for its audience. The ethics of making Dussander the interesting character and his strident accusers the bland and vapid ones are, of course, also questionable. Perhaps if he were a man at once horrified at what he did and yet still partly indoctrinated into Nazi ways, the character would be interesting, but he is not. He rather remembers and repeats his deeds with...
...Fong's rise is proof. Early this year he looked like a long shot to get out of the Republican primary; now he is poised to become the Senate's first Chinese American from outside Hawaii. He can thank Boxer for that. Already a G.O.P. target for her strident partisanship, Boxer invited still more attacks for her belated criticism of President Bill Clinton's adultery. (Her daughter is married to the First Lady's brother.) In contrast to the vociferous Boxer, Fong, who is pro-choice-in-the-first-trimester, delivers speeches like a CPA explaining tax law. "His biggest...