Word: villainized
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...film's sunny beginning is soon shattered by Cruella De Vil, who hatches a plot to steal the puppies in order to satisfy her obsessive desire for a Dalmatian fur coat. De Vil is Disney's wildest villain: slinky, sophisticated, overbearing, and utterly deranged. Given the chance to indulge herself by playing such a comically evil figure, Glenn Close delivers a masterful and unrestrained performance. Close gets to verbally abuse every character in the movie, shouting her insults with contempt and devilish glee. She also perfects the look of materialistic dementia that defines Cruella's character. Because the puppies...
Also gone this year is Stanley Tucci's viciously charismatic villain Richard Cross, who died from AIDS in last season's final episode. The shady character in the current case is played, against type, by The Waltons dad Ralph Waite. With none of the digressions and subplots that burdened Murder One early on last year, the show moves along at a perfectly clipped pace. In the second episode this week, Rooney is already in court and standing trial...
...fifth or sixth reel of an ongoing eco-melodrama involving the threatened cutting of ancient California redwoods on the foggy north coast flickered to a close last week, though more perils lurked. There lay the heroine, hog-tied to the tracks; there came the choo-choo; there gloated the villain, twirling his mustache. Logging was to begin in three days. Negotiators for the U.S. Department of the Interior were scripted as heroes at a day-long wrangle at the Washington office of California Senator Dianne Feinstein...
...things that way, is Charles Hurwitz, a Houston-based junk-bond wizard who plays the corporate-villain role well. Charlie's sin? He owns the trees, and he'll cut them if he wants to--and does he want to. In 1986 his company, MAXXAM (1995 sales: $2.57 billion), bought Pacific Lumber, the redwoods' owner. Hurwitz visited PL's Scotia, California, mill, and told workers he believed in the golden rule: "He who has the gold, rules." Then he drained $55 million from PL's $93 million pension fund, and cranked up the timber cut to pay off his debt...
...traditions sometimes change. During the '60s, Columbus began to be seen more as a villain than a hero, and the celebration of Columbus' voyages has been replaced with celebrations of the indigenous peoples...