I didn’t dream of being a farmer-boy-turned-king when I was younger, I dreamed of being a princess. And we won’t speak of Piers Anthony, and what it was like to read his novels, which came highly recommended, while also trying to deal with grown men yelling things about my body at me while I walked home from the library. My problem was not that Amberle sacrificed herself, but that I was never convinced it was in character for her to do so, especially as described in the book. What bothered me more was that they rarely acted in ways that seemed logical, consistent, or grounded in anything resembling human behavior.
It wasn’t just that the lives of the girls and women in these novels seemed to revolve around men.
After all, Terry Brooks may have given me Brin Ohmsford, but he also turned Amberle into a tree. I had loved reading fantasy as a child, but even as an older teen I struggled to find speculative fiction that challenged me without making me feel unwelcome and unvalued. My love for Tad William’s Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn isn’t unconditional, but it did a lot to restore my faith that I could find fantasy stories that I would enjoy as an adult. I can’t quite remember why I decided to give it a chance, but I’m incredibly glad that I did. Until I stumbled across a copy of The Dragonbone Chair at a used bookstore. In the early oughts, I nearly gave up on epic fantasy altogether. All that matters is he keeps on ticking.By Jenny Thurman on May 13th, pretend I am a princess, so that I can try and behave like one.” What makes him tick? Hatred? Humiliation? A toxic combination of the two or more? Take your pick. Shorn of his facility for boxing, he's the abusive husband or father people suffer because they have no choice. There are few Bickels and Pupkins, but there are many LaMottas. As embodied by De Niro, he is violence incarnate. LaMotta is a winner, a tenacious fighter whose propensity for punishment, giving it and taking it, was publicly celebrated and privately feared. Travis Bickel and Rupert Pupkin (of Scorsese's "The King of Comedy") were deep-tissue studies in derangement they provided squirm-inducing insight into the lives of loners/losers. De Niro's LaMotta is all appetite, and he feasts primarily on conflict. This is all technically impressive, but it's the interiority of the performance that both dazzles and terrifies. Then the production shut down for several months so the star could take a four-month binge-eating tour of Italy, during which he packed on seventy pounds to play LaMotta as an older, heftier man. LaMotta supervised the actor's boxing training, which went so well the former champ claimed De Niro would've been one of the 20 greatest middleweights of all time. There's nothing in its class because only a celluloid-in-his-veins filmmaker like Scorsese could operate on this meta level.ĭe Niro's fierce, physical commitment to the role is legendary. The tension between Felson and Vincent is palpable, but, at an elemental level, this is Newman schooling Cruise in the fine art of motion-picture immortality. Newman was once the blue-eyed toast of Hollywood, a straight-up ladykiller who could've coasted on his looks, but respected himself and his audience too much to phone it in ( with a few notable exceptions).
The film is as much about Newman and Cruise as it is about their characters. It's a fascinating contrast in movie-star styles, and it's the game within the game that makes "The Color of Money" so enthralling. The former pool shark sees a sliver of himself in the obnoxiously talented Vincent Lauria (Tom Cruise), and takes a shine to his street-smart girlfriend Carmen (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio). 25 years after the release of "The Hustler," Newman imbues the older "Fast" Eddie Felson with a bitter vigorousness.