Word: villainization
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...domed underworld of freak psychics and three-breasted prostitutes, ruled by a tyrant from whom the colonists must buy air, and he has just jacked up the price. It is on Mars, toward the end, that Total Recall slows down to tie up its plot and provide each villain with an appropriately gruesome demise. It goes wussily misterioso when Quaid meets a Yodaesque guru. But even when the film flirts with becoming ordinary, it is propelled by the stolid charm of Schwarzenegger, who carries the whole movie as easily as a dumbbell between his fingers...
...them were fumbling what was supposed to be a peaceful, harmless burglary. The main reason is that Joe belongs in jail, feels comfortable there. Not secure, understand, because dope selling in the lockup is even tougher than it is on the streets. Everyone there is a villain, and every villain has at least a shank, a homemade knife. Black and Aryan gangs feud murderously. Studs and lovers brutalize each other. And Joe, of course, misses Kitty Litter, his stripper girlfriend. But he is an outcast, and jail is where, when you go there, they have to take...
MEANS OF ASCENT by Robert A. Caro (Knopf; $24.95). This second volume of an extended biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson offers a hair-raising, white- knuckle ride through the 1940s, when its hero-villain clawed, scrambled and cheated his way toward the political mountaintop...
Hazelwood's curious journey from villain to victim is not yet complete. The Coast Guard is expected to seek the revocation of his captain's license, and he remains a co-defendant with his former employer in more than 100 civil damage suits that will keep lawyers overpaid for years. After the jury rendered its verdict, Hazelwood talked wistfully about going back to sea. "That's what I do," he said. His attorney suggested he might even try to persuade Exxon to reinstate his client as skipper of an oil tanker. As unlikely as that now seems...
...formed, Lenin was aware of its explosive nature. He realized that if his original proposal was formally implemented without guaranteeing the rights of republics, the union would eventually be transformed into a notorious ruler of the center over the republics, overseen by what he called the "Great-Russian chauvinist, villain and tyrant, which is what a typical Russian bureaucrat is." After Lenin died in 1924, his worst fears became a reality under Stalin...