Word: acerbic
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...precision of his diction, the seeming intimacy of his asides, and that dry cackle of a laugh, he was the movies' Johnny Carson. Surely no one devoted as much intelligent energy as Lemmon did to chic, Hollywood-style humor in its mature years. Out of his mouth came acerb insights fashioned by Billy Wilder (seven films), Blake Edwards (six) and Neil Simon (four). The list includes The Apartment, Operation Mad Ball, the Odd Couple--and the all-time funniest farce, Some Like It Hot, in which he and Tony Curtis dress as women and Lemmon falls into character a little...
After three decades on the Reprise label, singing acerb ballads and jingles that became hits for others (I Think It's Going to Rain Today, Mama Told Me Not to Come) and, vagrantly, for himself (Short People, I Love L.A.), Newman has moved to DreamWorks to release his first album of plain old songs since Land of Dreams, his 1988 masterpiece of autobiographical melancholy. How nice to discover that a change of venue hasn't changed his mood. On the 12 cuts of Bad Love, Newman still sees the world as a nasty place full of sad, warped people...
...hidden national treasure of political common sense. Analyzing the hatred some people have for Clinton, Shearer ladles blame and caustic wit on the President, his G.O.P. posse and the moralizing TV newsies with their "hideously bad acting." It's a smart challenge to lazy thinking. Along with another acerb little volume, Gore Vidal's The American Presidency, it can be taken as an ideal chaser to the recent binge of Monicaholism. Hemlock, anyone...
...also expect the movie to be a hit, and to solidify Lawrence's rep as a multimedia comedy star: Richard Pryor, the next generation. Lawrence has Pryor's bantam pugnacity, but he lacks the underdog charm, the skewed genius for mimicry and acerb social humor. He has got the Pryor attitude but not the aptitude. And maybe there can be another difference: Lawrence must keep from setting himself and his career on fire...
...graces three indie films out this month. In Linklater's acerb subUrbia, a kind of strip-mall Rent without the singing (or quite so much self-pity), she plays a rock publicist who mingles dangerously with the lowlifes. In Greg Mottola's stodgy The Daytrippers she's the younger daughter of a Long Island, New York, family given to public declarations of emotional frailty. And in Christopher Guest's haphazardly delightful Waiting for Guffman she's a fast-food counter girl who gets the chance to co-star in a tacky musical tribute to Blaine, Missouri. Posey graces so many...