Word: dumbness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...cannot look at the condition of these people today without a sense of anguish. A starving baby minutes away from death has no responsibility or knowledge of Cambodian politics. What human cruelties and failings, one wonders, have reduced tens of thousands of people to the state of dumb, brute animals...
Beuys' sculpture is so wrapped in personal myth that it all looks equally good to his devotees. To those who are less committed, it seems very uneven. His stacks of felt rectangles, topped with copper or iron plates, have the dumb, disengaged look common to most minimal art. It does not help much to learn that the slabs of felt are meant to resemble the plates in a wet-cell battery; no current runs, and inertia is inertia. His most extravagant object-20 tons of mutton fat cast into the form of a corner of a pedestrian underpass leading...
...Maddie, the buxom secretary to the committee who is the root of Parliament's moral problem and who seems to know every government official by his first name, is the centerpiece of the show in more than just a visual way. Stoppard starts this character out as an unembellished dumb broad, and about halfway through the show transforms her into a voice of the common people, instructing the MPs on their duties, telling them, "The people don't care about what you do on your own time--it's only the newspapers," and eventually writing the draft of the committee...
Even if this film were consistently funny, it could not avoid ticketing as slick Hollywood escapism. No dumb palooka, Pakula has proven capable--with Klute and All the President's Men--of far worthier cinematic ventures. But given the dearth of screenplays in Hollywood, the flipquel will probably haunt us for years. Watch for Queen Kong...
...Ayuh, ayuh. Listen, you moved here four years ago from Central Park West, so forget the rustic impersonations. What I need is, you know somebody we could use for an interview? Typical local, not too smooth, not too dumb...