Word: plot
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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Much as your average musical's book is just an excuse for letting go with lots of song and dance, Dumas' bizarrely complicated plot is just an excuse for action and dueling and general running about. Although the king himself, at the urging of the insidious Richelieu, has outlawed the duel, his gallant musketeers still try to work through worn-out codes of loyalty and honor, something that the Cardinal's guards don't share. As a result, every duel devolves into chaos and confusion. And also a good deal of fun. Hamlin's actors seem to have jumped into...
Meanwhile, one of her ladies-in-waiting has written to D'Artagnan, "I have been abducted again," and, with that, the plot's whole creaky machinery is set in motion. Timothy Carden is D'Artagnan, the would-be fourth musketeer; to him falls the task of combining many of the disparate elements of the play. As the busiest actor on stage, Carden is called upon to handle battles, brawls, and bedroom scenes and does so winningly with his usual blend of physical energy and ingenuous geniality. He provides the driving force that sets the other three musketeers-Michael Smith...
...coming across on THVN newscasts, which are unaccountably aired with tunes like Mrs. Robinson and Love Is Blue as background music. Actors, too, find scant opportunity to shine in THVN's ersatz soap operas and sitcoms, which are long on doctrine and all too short on drama. Typical plot: North Vietnamese saboteur infiltrates the South, discovers that life under the Saigon government is not as bad as Hanoi has made it out to be, defects...
...films. On the basis of riverrun, it has been said that Korty is a director in search of a screenplay. It seems more likely that he is a technician in search of a creative imagination. His visuals in riverrun are on no higher a level of achievement than the plot-in a narrative film, how could they be? Korty's editing and camerawork go in either for slap-happy pastoral or flash-backing exposition. There are only a few instances when writer-director-photographer Korty shows any flair for metaphor. When Sarah reminisces about sitting with her dying mother...
Machine Gun McCain is an Italian gangster film in the old American tradition, manufactured with the kind of sardonic reverence that made many of the spaghetti Westerns so much cockeyed fun. The plot creaks with age: an ex-con named Hank McCain (John Cassavetes) gets sprung from the pen after serving twelve years of a life sentence. "How's it feel to be outside again, Dad?" beams his benefactor at the prison gate. "Don't ever call me that," snarls McCain, who regards his foppish son with heavy-lidded suspicion...