Word: trumpets
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...audience is not overly surprised, then, when Gilliam finds himself unable to play the trumpet after receiving a broken jaw in a brawl. Gilliam's loss elicits mixed feelings. It is sad to the extent that his entire reason for living is snatched away, ironically while defending Giant from thugs looking to collect on gambling debts. At the same time, Gilliam's decline and fall is predictable--considering the previous structure of his life--and is, to a large degree, well-deserved...
...does for a living is a complete mystery. Lee does not take the time to explain this. He seems concerned only with driving home the virtues of the family and having his film neatly end the same way it began. The film opens with the young Gilliam practicing the trumpet under his mother's watchful eye while his friends urge him to come outside and play; the film ends with Gilliam's son, Indigo, and his son's friends reprising the same scene more than two decades later...
...began after World War II, athletic competition between the U.S. and the Soviet bloc has served as a surrogate cold war. While the battles on the playing fields took place between individual performers or teams, the organizations that financed athletes and the crowds that cheered them on tended to trumpet each victory as a triumph for an entire economic and political system and to mourn any defeat as a boon to an iniquitous empire. Sports officials on both sides exploited the conflict to raise funds. The political overtones helped motivate athletes. Says swimmer Rowdy Gaines, who won three Olympic gold...
...dusk provides a fitting backdrop for the action, and the characters incorporate us into the setting by making their enterances from behind the audience. The Herald (Christopher Davidson) also helps in this capacity--he introduces us to each scene with wonderfully realistic-sounding solos on an imaginary trumpet. Kudos also to the producer Valerie Nestor for the Mickey Mouse blankets distributed beforehand to ward off cold...
...there was one social program that congressional Democrats could exploit as a campaign rallying cry, it was child care. With elections looming this fall, they should have been in a position to trumpet their efforts to help working mothers, 75% of whom tell pollsters that they are unable to find adequate care for their children while they are on the job. Instead, House Democrats have allowed the first nationwide child-care system to become mired in committee turf battles for six months. As Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican, tartly observed last week, "If this bill were an actual child, Congress...