Word: underworld
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...little joke to its very end. It makes The Lost Ones a sort of parable driven to death among details--the rough grayness of flesh in the cylinder, the mindless exactness ruling the wanderings of its denizens. It takes a single notion and analyzes it into a whole underworld...
...plot is just the kind of gangster genealogy that, as they say, names names (Genovese, Anastasia, Profaci, Luciano), although the movie actually has less relation to the underworld history of the past four decades than to old Edward G. Robinson bloodlettings on the Warner Brothers back lot. In the traditional Robinson role of the chairman of the thugs is Joseph Wiseman, a usually reliable actor who has mysteriously decided to portray the Sicilian overlord Salvatore Maranzano in an accent that is pure Transylvanian. Maranzano divides the gangs all over the country into families, then stands back and watches...
...most important obstacle is determined overacting during the first two acts, in which we most the opera's seedy underworld characters. Histrionics are fine and director. Charles Langmuir uses them to good effect, in the big crowd scenes where Brecht attacks society's corruption directly. But in more intimate scenes, where the attack is subtler, the acting ought to be more delicate...
Guys and Dolls. A Damon Runyon character once bet 5 to 1 for the underdog "Harvards" over the "Yales" in the New London crew races because he figured nothing in life had odds much better than 5 to 4. The irresistable folk of Runyon's Manhattan underworld gang-up with Frank Loesser's superb songs to make this a musical offer no audience could refuse...
...military bases now converted into refugee centers across Britain, thousands of Asians from Uganda last week wound up their ten-day celebration of Navratri, a Hindu festival of songs, prayer chants and dances in honor of an ancient war victory by the god Rama over the demons of the underworld. The incense and joss sticks were often lit at makeshift shrines on card tables, and the traditional ornate, hand-painted dancing sticks were replaced by plain wood dowels. Displaced and dispossessed, the refugees nonetheless found abundant reason to celebrate. Said one technical engineer, who arrived in London with his wife...