Word: circus
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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Nothing went right last night, or at least very little. Even when Billy Cleary's skaters battled back to tie Northeastern--momentarily--at five apiece early in the third period, they had little to look back on except occasional flashes of individual talent amid a circus of give-aways, broken plays, Wacky Racers fast breaks and slapshot prayers from the blue line. It was one of those utterly ridiculous games, where three-goal leads topple like Persian Gulf governments, and "defense" seems like a wistful memory from a bygone...
...LEADERS of the Moral Majority crusade are absolutely convinced that they are right. Once the fire has seized the convert--once the seed of conviction is planted at a circus-tent revival meeting or through a multi-cassette mail-order course in Christian fundamentalism--it burns, un-flickering, fueled by the comfort of Absolutes. A protecting barrier between the flame and the winds of thought, rationality, diversity, and complication, the Bible is the answer book. Right-wing conservatism--the Way. The Book--the Truth. The flame--the Light. Only one thing missing...
...Doctorow is all of us at once. Most of all he is Joe of Paterson, a wily scavenger escaping from the Great Depression, sleeping on box cars, eating from cans, living like a tent peg in a one-ring circus. And then one night the star of Bethlehem Steel leads him to the private game reserve of one queer millionaire, autobody magnate F. W. Bennett, drawing-room Zeus, master of Loon Lake...
...well as amusing fates. People are murdered, crushed by falling trees; some drink too much, some go crazy. Those who think of Welty as a gentle, "safe" Southern writer may be surprised to find an early story about a geek, a consumer of live chickens for a traveling circus...
...this fundamental modesty it becomes something unique. The simple high spirits of the ferris wheel save The Stunt Man from a pathetic failure. This film falls into the great American tradition of roguish, exploitative entertainment. This is a movie of sequins and comic strip naivete, of the three-ring circus. And Rush is a dazzling ringmaster...