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From: Dean Phillip Kanipe <dpk@acpub.duke.edu> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 19:44:34 -0800 Subject: Contact Mini-Review (See This Movie!) |
OK, I just went to see CONTACT... and what can I say. If you don't go to see this movie, then you are a fool, and a pox on you. It is by far the best thing that's going to come out of mainstream Hollywood for a very, very long time. This film is huge, and I don't mean that simply in a big-budget, big-name way. It is a huge story that is sweeping, beautiful, glorious, gripping, intelligent, clever,.... yada-yada-yada... poetic, thrilling, and just plain sheer genius. I never really read the book, so I don't know how faithful it is to the novel. I'm going to actually read it now, and that's saying a lot, considering the trauma that the Duke Department of English left me with by crushing my ability to take any pleasure in the written word. My gut feeling, though, is that even if it is not a direct adaptation, it is done so well that the late Doctor would not feel any shame in it. If I were Sagan, this is how I would wish to be remembered. I'm not going to give anything away... it would be pointless, even if I was capable of rendering the story in words. Suffice it to say that I take back all the bad things I ever said about Robert Zemeckis, Carl Sagan, Mathew Maconaghy, Tom Skerrit, and anyone else that had anything to do with this picture and who's name I can't spell without VARIETY in front of me. And as for Jodie Foster... well, shoe-in for Best Actress, and damned well deserved. I could shoot R. Reagan to prove my love for her.... (That was a Joke, NSA grepping program.) Honestly, go see this movie. You'd be doing good if it was the last film you ever saw. I don't think that there will be anything of its like for a very, very long time. Kudos to James Wood as the slimy National Security advisor, Tom Skerrit as the slimier grand-standing National Science advisor, Rob Lowe as the nasty little Christian Coalition worm, the black chick as Clinton's behind-the-scenes mover-and-shaker press secretary, the creepy blonde dude as the nutcase religious fanatic, the old guy as the Howard Hughes/Bill Gates/Michael Jackson freaky-weird-too-rich-for-his-own-good Wanna-take-a-ride? gazillionaire-who-made-it-all-possible, and the bland guy from ST. ELSEWHERE as dad. Sigh.... They should have sent a poet. It's too beautiful for words. I'm going to be writing love letters to Jodie for the next month... Later, dpk PS-Imagine 2001, only truly uplifting and not leaving the dolts going, "Hunh?"
Index: "Contact" (1997 movie)
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