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| | CNN.com - EW review: Top-notch 'Oliver Twist' - Sep 23, 2005 |
 | | The grimy, pint-size pickpockets Oliver falls in with have the crazed, hardened look of children ripped from childhood too soon, and their scaly handler, the sniveling Fagin (Ben Kingsley), is appropriately decayed, all bent of nose (with Semitic intimations) and mossy of teeth. |
 | | When Fagin clutches Oliver, played by angelic-looking newcomer Barney Clark, in a gnarled gesture of possessiveness (and, in Kingsley's nuanced portrayal, warped love), the contrast between the rotten "Jewishness" of the old man and the Christian luminosity of the boy couldn't be more acute. |
 | | As in his previous movie, "The Pianist" (also written by Harwood), Polanski here considers the case of a person shaped (or is it misshaped?) by a fate over which he has no control. |
| www.cnn.com /2005/SHOWBIZ/Movies/09/23/ew.mov.oliver (582 words) |
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