Word: thrills
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...another planet in the same solar system, one that was a mere seven-months' flight away? Mars had a warm, dense atmosphere, water, floodplains. Last August brought news of a meteorite, most likely from Mars, containing minerals and other evidence of a long-past microbial life; a thrill was felt around the world...
Tonight the thrill is greater. Earlier in the day, a rocket ship dropped a cluster of airbags into the flood delta of a valley called Ares, and all the Main Street parades and the hot dog cookouts and three-legged races stopped cold. Five hours later, televised pictures emerged depicting a rust-colored desert with rust-colored rocks and a distant hill against a gray-brown sky. The scenery was boring, the excitement overwhelming. People on TV spoke of how great and adventurous America is, how like a Pathfinder--a nation of explorers and pioneers. But the feeling...
...stag loops and major-studio product--would grind away in Main Street fleabags and drive-ins, inflicting their lurid, no-budget fantasies on generations of bored salesmen and horny teens. Hollywood put sweet dreams on screen; exploitation directors filmed the raging id. See brutal men sweat over balky virgins! Thrill as mousy guys find sluts whose sexual appetites are insatiable! Or, as Rene Bond says it in Edward D. Wood Jr.'s 1971 Necromania, "insashable...
...assurance, and all those pretty people realizing outrageous dreams. Our directors know how to fulfill Alfred Hitchcock's aim: to make the Japanese audience scream at the same time as the American audience. Perhaps they know it too well. A manic roteness now envelops action films; the need to thrill has become a drab addiction. Isn't there more to moviemaking than having your finger on the pulse of the world public? Can't the megalo-melodrama be infused with passion and ingenuity? The answer so far, and with just one exception, is no--not this season. For this...
...actors go bigger, so does the film; it's the most delirious major-studio melodrama since Natural Born Killers. But it's also dead serious--because Woo has restored moral gravity to acts of violence. This isn't just a thrill ride; it's a rocket into the thrilling past, when directors could scare you with how much emotion they packed into a movie...