Word: texts
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Precautions may be indulged for the most avidly awaited, assiduously hyped film since Gone With the Wind. But they may also boomerang, by setting up expectations that few films could satisfy. That too was evident at the screening. Robust cheers greeted the first words of the sacred text ("A long time ago...") and the blast of John Williams' brass as the title Star Wars appeared. Later there was mild applause at Yoda's arrival. By then the impulse to ecstasy had been diluted into rote nostalgia. For whatever reason, the audience was quieter at the end than at the beginning...
...plot is more complicated than this--and much chattier. Even the opening is talky. "Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic," the now familiar trapezoidal text-crawl tells us. "The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute." Immediately one is perplexed. A summary made sense in the earlier films; they were episodes IV, V and VI in the grand fable, and as continuations of an initially untold saga, they required some elucidation. But what's the need for back-story text in a tale that is just beginning? Can it be that Lucas was unable to dramatize...
...whirling through widening spirals of hatred and loss. A strange, contradictory suspense builds throughout the play, and the judgment scene in which Shylock calls in his bond before the law is riveting. Hillel Drama, through its shrewd interpretation of Shakespeare's work, uncovers the ironies and contradictions in the text, creating a true and more effective production...
...town on the road map you're reading seems unnecessarily small. Then you notice how microscopic the print on the medicine bottle has become. How the addresses in the phone book have become exasperatingly inscrutable. And how they're just not printing paperback novels very well anymore: the text seems like one big blur...
...reason why Rushdie's book feels incomplete is that although music is the focus of his novel, he does not infuse enough of this music into his language and text. Ormus' songs lie flat on the page, and Rushdie's descriptions of VTO's music often leave more questions than answers. Rushdie also fails to deliver completely on his promise to present a rock version of Orpheus and Eurydice. Though he invokes the myth to great effect at the beginning of the novel, the theme is ultimately neglected. Perhaps Rushdie stretched himself too much by venturing into the world...