Word: virgil
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...star fashion reporter, Kitty Potter, a dizzy blonde with a pronounced Southern accent. The studio publicity for "Ready to Wear" gushes that Basinger only had ten days of preparation time for the role--what an agonizing stretch it must have been for her. Kitty is meant to be our Virgil, adding structure and guiding us through the pitfalls of fashion hell. But Basinger, like Altman, his actors and audience, gives up trying to understand what's going on and instead enjoys the spectacle...
...vote campaigns are ostensibly nonpartisan, meaning the amount spent does not have to be disclosed to the Federal Election Commission. As a result, official spending calculations can be misleading. In September, eight-term Representative Mike Synar, also in Oklahoma, narrowly lost a Democratic runoff primary to Virgil Cooper, a retired principal. Cooper's victory seemed all the more astounding since Synar, the well-funded incumbent, had outspent him by a huge margin. But in fact, if all the money invested in supposedly nonpartisan voter-education efforts by interest groups opposed to Synar were added to Cooper's total, Synar...
...film opens with Wyatt Earp, played with cool reassurance by Henry Fonda, and Earp's three brothers driving their cattle west to California. In search of "a shave and a beer," Wyatt and his brothers Virgil (Tim Holt) and Morgan (Ward Bond) head into the town of Tombstone leaving young James (Don Garner) behind to watch the cattle. When Wyatt takes it upon himself to subdue a drunk Indian so that he can get his shave in peace, he begs the question, "What kind of a town is this?" Immediately, he is offered the position of town marshall, but turns...
...scholarship to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia gave Rorem entry into the company of the other wunderkinder and their mentors who, from the 1940s on, would do much to define what serious American music was all about: Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Virgil Thomson, Marc Blitzstein, Lukas Foss, Samuel Barber, John Cage. Rorem's feelings of admiration, doubt, jealousy and gratefulness for these figures inspire the sharpest sketches in a book crammed with sharp sketches. On two composers who straddled the concert stage and Broadway: "Lenny Bernstein would never have been quite what he was without the firm example...
Still, one leaves this rich meal feeling curiously empty. The reason may be that Rorem has been voluble about every facet of his life except whom and what he really cares about. Explaining why he felt his protege was "not a dependable critic," Virgil Thomson once said of Rorem, "His egocentricity gets in the way. It prevents his seriously liking or hating anything." Rorem quotes this remark, along with others even less flattering about himself. It's a gutsy thing to do, but it only points to a terrible void...