Word: westernness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Eisenhower stayed behind, alone, as his commanders rushed out to transmit the order that commenced Operation Overlord, the invasion of Western Europe. His own duty was done for the day. He went down to a pier in Portsmouth to watch British soldiers board their landing craft. The biggest fleet in history -- 59 convoys strung over 100 miles, led by six battleships, 22 cruisers and 93 destroyers -- set sail toward the beaches of Normandy between 60 and 100 miles away...
...Naval Academy last week, "marked the turning point of our century, when we joined with our Allies to stem a dark tide of dictatorship, and to start a flow of democracy and freedom that continues to sweep the world." While peace is far from universal even in Europe, Western Europe is more prosperous and more unified than it has ever been. The cold war proved to be only a temporary faltering. The success of the wartime alliance gave birth to the United Nations and NATO and made America a permanent leader of the global community...
...June 6, just after midnight, 16,000 paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions dropped chaotically into the dark coastal countryside to protect the western flank of the incoming army against counterattacks. Lost in low clouds, many of the planes missed their drop sites by miles, but the scattered paratroopers, snapping cricket noisemakers to find each other, gradually regrouped and moved toward the beach. An additional 8,000 men from the British 6th Airborne jumped in to guard the eastern flank, catching the Germans guarding key bridges by complete surprise...
...actually succeeds pretty well. The best (and worst) you can say about Maverick is that it does the job -- it allows you to spend a perfectly agreeable evening without making you feel completely stupid or totally conned. The film offers us Mel Gibson as a new Bret Maverick, the Western gambler, as well as the old TV Maverick, James Garner, now playing a wry frontier sheriff. These two guys can make you smile contentedly even when the script is wandering and they're just sort of standing around waiting for its next good part to develop. Jodie Foster...
...Maverick trying to round up the money to enter a high-stakes poker game before it starts. Writer William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) and director Richard Donner (the Lethal Weapon series) both seem to understand that the TV Maverick offered tinkly satirical relief from the other Western programs of the day, which took themselves so seriously. If the filmmakers lose the show's sharpness by converting it to the large screen with broad gestures, they can live with it. Doubtless all the rest...