Word: lumpenization
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...would be no surprise to hear such sentiments from enraged street protestors, about to torch an American flag. On the 'Arab street,' the Iraqi dictator has always been able to count on the support of the lumpen element - the ill-informed, reflexively anti-Israel and anti-American mob that sees in Saddam something akin to a working class hero, his very survival a slap in the face of the hated United States...
...good X-Files episode--full of plausible details placed in the service of paranormal (not to say paranoid) whoppers. But director Pellington's touch is light and flickering, and his actors are solid and persuasive. If you let yourself go with The Mothman Prophecies, it is--in its lumpen, serious way--sort...
...later speeded up and jollied up for Elvis as "Jailhouse Rock"); "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots" (about a moto-madman who "hit a screamin? diesel that was California-bound"); and "Framed" (in which the narrator is picked up by cops, fingered by stool pigeon, railroaded by prosecuting attorney). Lumpen tragicomedies, they had an implicit warning for their black listeners: that life was unfair to the underclass. As Leiber says in the "What?d I Say" book: "A lot of this had to do with being a white kid?s take on a black person?s take on white society...
There's some fun seeing Canadians like Myers and Neve Campbell (as a soap-opera star) try out their lumpen tristate accents. And the music still has its innocent juice. But the film is just one more sound-track CD in search of a plot. Or maybe we're already sick of the polyester '70s. Why couldn't 54 have been the year instead of the club...
Robert De Niro is our designated stalker, psycho of choice to the age of lumpen paranoia. Since he offers his fourth version of this character in The Fan, it's obvious that he's not yet tired of the furnished rooms, Wal-Mart wardrobes and frayed synapses that marked his darkly defining work in Taxi Driver, The King of Comedy and Cape Fear. A more objective observer, however, can't help thinking this game should be called on account of deja...