Chi Trib’s Colleen Mastony, a girl, delivers girl talk:
Today, Robert Redford’s strawberry blond hair is graying at the temples, his face is weathered and he wears a pair of thick, round-framed glasses. But with his slight build, sun-kissed skin and light freckles along his forearms, he retains the graceful ease and rugged good looks that once made him the golden boy of Hollywood. And — if you’re wondering — this septuagenarian can still make a heart flutter by flashing a smile and dropping a small compliment. (“That’s a beautiful name,” he says to me, mid-interview, as I swoon.)
She got this past copy editors who saw nothing amiss. Nor will higher-ups, I bet.
On the other hand, Chi Trib’s op-ed page, an oasis of sense in that publication, has another view of Redford’s and other anti-war movies:
By confusing the public’s war-weariness with their own carefully cultivated rage they’ve badly over-reached. Rage may be a good box office draw; exhaustion isn’t. The late film critic Pauline Kael is reported to have said that Richard Nixon couldn’t have won because she didn’t know anybody who voted for him. Similarly, maybe everyone [director] Paul Haggis knows shares his hatred for the war, but he just doesn’t know enough people to make a hit.
The “exhaustion” reference intended for the general public (by columnist Jonah Goldberg) could refer to Redford’s portrayal by Mastony as “pessimistic activist,” with angst in his veins. Question is, how many people want to sit through an hour and a half of Redford’s angst?
Blithe Spirit 