Word: acidly
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...CONFIDENTIAL Everybody knows the rudiments of the classic film-noir manner: chiaroscuro lighting, labyrinthine plots, dialogue written in battery acid. Working up imitations of it has become one of modern Hollywood's minor vices. But--a point usually missed--the style was never an end in itself. At its best it conveyed an idea about how the rottenness of big cities touches everyone, high and low, respectable and raffish. Director Curtis Hanson, working off James Ellroy's bitterly brewed novel about corrupt 1950s cops, gets that wonderfully right in a smart, complex film that exuberantly mixes comic excess, melodramatic pressure...
...hand her a real challenge: the world's meanest man. This guy, a writer named Melvin Udall (Jack Nicholson), can't even think about gays, blacks, Jews, Hispanics, women or little sick kids without making an acid slur. But long before the end of As Good As It Gets, the buoyant new bauble from TV- and movie-comedy master James L. Brooks (the Mary Tyler Moore Show, Terms of Endearment), Melvin is converted; he realizes that this woman, with her aggrieved look and a tongue as sharp as Cheddar, is his redeemer. He gulps hard and tells her, "You make...
...Sulfur compounds from the fuel are removed to eliminate emissions that form acid rain...
...fame. Because of whole ship mama Sigourney Weaver. Because of genetics and the human attachment to willful mediocrity. Because we've never seen an alien underwater (where you also can't scream). Because bounty hunters watch the TV shopping network. Because of Dominique Pinon's forehead. Because aliens bleed acid, and androids bleed semen. Because alien-human hybrids have pixie noses. And, always, because of the deeper issues...
...Humor in Action Movies. The progression is easy: take your run-of-the-mill put-down, one-liner or joke--preferably old enough to seem fresh now--and slap it into a situation where the only other people in the room are the joke-hearer and someone with acid for blood and a bad case of extraterrestrial colic. Rewording may be necessary. Example: "Who do I have to fuck around here to get off this ship?" or the old-school misogynistic refrain recontextualized "Must be a chick thing." File under sub-heading The Role of the Quotidian, such as someone...