Word: odd
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...like symmetry turns up in The Quincunx itself. It contains roughly half a million words, apportioned as follows: five parts, each as long as a conventional contemporary novel, which in turn are divided into five books with 25 chapters apiece. Structurally, then, the work lives up to its odd title, which basically means a symmetrical arrangement of five things within a square or rectangle...
...four of them, is variously unaware, unconcerned and unprepared for emergency. Populism being the operative spirit of this genre, it is up to Perfection's two-man lower class, Val and Earl (adorable Kevin Bacon and solid Fred Ward), to get their betters organized. They make their living doing odd jobs, bicker laconically, dream of urban glamour, can't imagine how to obtain it. But staring into a graboid's gaping mouth, they're the kind of guys -- resourceful, practical, unflappable -- you want on your side...
...East-West collision, which, as rendered by Parks, sounds like a rush-hour pileup on the Golden State Freeway. Not that the music is jarring; far from it. Melodies waft about like tropical breezes, blowing a little irony in all directions. Tokyo Rose begins with a typically peppy but odd Parks arrangement of America -- jukebox Charles Ives -- and ends with a tune about baseball (One Home Run) sung in English and Japanese. In between is a chronicle of misunderstanding. Manzanar is about the internment camps of World War II; White Chrysanthemum is the % poignant evocation of the death...
...kennel seemed an odd venue for a watershed event in U.S. military history. But when members of the 988th Military Police Company from Fort Benning, Ga., engaged Panamanian soldiers in a firefight at an attack-dog compound near Panama City, the American platoon was commanded by a woman: Captain Linda L. Bray, 29, of Butner, N.C. Bray, one of 771 Army women who took part in the Panama operation, had added a page to the annals of American warfare: for the first time women, who compose almost 11% of the U.S. armed forces, had engaged hostile troops in modern combat...
Taking the part seemed an odd choice for Freeman, who had remained prickly about the kinds of roles offered to black actors, but in Fast Black he saw a chance to flesh out the stereotype. "I had no intention of wearing crushed- velvet jump suits, big hats or high-heeled pumps," he says. But the changes went far beyond the cosmetic, as Freeman transformed what could have been another cliched pimp caricature into a harrowing portrait of a desperately brutal man. The performance won three major critics awards, an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and Freeman his first crack...