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Article: Independence Day.
- Article from:
- Cineaste
- Article date:
- June 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 Cineaste Publishers, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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When the coming-attractions trailers for Independence Day began playing in theaters early in 1996, audiences always cheered at the spectacular demolition of the White House by an alien spaceship as big as Rhode Island. "It blowed up good," as the farmer-critics used to say (it was their loftiest and most frequent movie verdict) on SCTV's parody of Siskel and Ebert.
The scene was probably cheered nowhere so loudly as in Washington itself, America's last colonial outpost, governed at the whim of a hostile Congress and currently suffering the tender mercies of rule by Mayor Marion Barry. Like most movies that visit Washington, Barry's city was nowhere to be seen. And it ...