Word: true
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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EVERY NOW AND THEN a film comes along that arouses a good deal of disagreement among both critics and the general audience. The axiom holds true for films, as for everything else, that which one man loves may well sicken another. This sort of critical and public debate should be encouraged; after all, it makes for a better-informed audience and we can only hope that a better-informed audience will demand and eventually get better films...
Finally, the humor of one nation is not necessarily funny to the folk of a very different country. True, Americans have always been suckers for British humor, but there's a common cultural bond there; that bond is much weaker with regard to Italy. It is a strange and deeply troubled nation, small wonder then that its filmmakers should present such a dark vision. But while that vision might, possibly--just maybe--have some social significance, the flaws that pervade Viva Italia! make it hardly worthwhile, save for the hardiest Italophile. No one needs to offended, bored, and bewildered...
People in earlier civilizations and some primitive tribes up to modern times did dream-and believe-that personal names held mortal power. In The Golden Bough, Sir James Frazer tells how the ancient Egyptians and aboriginal Australians alike took pains to protect their secret true names-and the vital power they contained-from falling into the possession of outsiders. Aging Eskimos, Frazer also records, sometimes take new names in the belief they thus get a fresh start in life. Such superstitions have waned in today's civilizations. Still, as Noah Jacobs points out in Naming-Day in Eden, people...
...most disreputable fraternity house-are a filthy, outrageous lot. They guzzle and spit beer, drive motorcycles indoors, dump Fizzies in the school swimming pool, pile up 1.2 grade-point averages on their "permanent records" and wreck the homecoming parade. Here, at long last, are movie characters who embody the true spirit of American higher education...
Though Director John Landis (The Kentucky Fried Movie) strives for an ensemble effort, he does allow one true star performance-from John Belushi. This Saturday Night Live regular, here making his big-screen debut, may be the funniest fat comic actor since Jackie Gleason. Ill-shaven and semicomatose, Belushi plays the mangiest animal of them all. He does not have many lines, but he is splendid at starting food fights and leading his fraternity brothers in drunken choruses of Louie Louie...