Word: antic
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THERE ARE TWO JEFFREY WIGANDS. ONE IS the grave, embattled, righteous man millions of viewers watched on 60 Minutes last month as he offered up potentially devastating inside information about the machinations of his former employer, tobacco giant Brown & Williamson. Then there is the somewhat antic teacher his high school students know and love. One day recently he was darting about the dingy science classroom at DuPont Manual High School in Louisville, Kentucky, like a gnome on triple espresso, questioning and wisecracking in his rapid-fire Bronx rasp as 30 ninth-grade advanced physical-science students went over results...
...makes us uneasy, and Roth extracts it, as he has done for nearly 40 years, with a technique and verbal flair unmatched by his contemporaries. Sabbath the houseguest rummaging through a teenager's underwear drawer or attempting to seduce his host's wife is the sort of baggy-pants antic that a young Philip Roth probably enjoyed in Newark, New Jersey's long-gone burlesque houses. Readers may remember one of them as the place where Alexander Portnoy discovered an unconventional way to break in his baseball glove...
...possible that Tolkin, who in 1992 adapted his own novel, The Player, for the screen, harbored satirical hopes for this project. But as a director he lacks the antic eye that (often enough to keep us interested) rescues Robert Altman from depression and pretension. Tolkin just doesn't know how to position himself -- far enough from his characters to make fun of them, close enough to them to retain our sympathy. And the question of whether they will make a go of Hipocracy, the upmarket clothing store they decide to open, is not a compelling one. Shopkeeping cannot compare...
...only memorable character created by a woman in the past five years is Julia Sweeney's Pat -- and the joke is that no one knows Pat's sex. The show has all but abandoned nuanced relationship comedy in favor of TV parodies and broad, running characters that are like antic vaudeville acts. Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner used to play sketches in bed together. Now we have Operaman...
Hitchcock's film, written by John Michael Hayes and adapted from the short story by Cornell Woolrich, intertwines a murder mystery and the voyeuristic antic of an incapacitated photographer, with a feud of the sexes. Lisa Carol Freemont, the most eligible Park avenue princess, is in love with said photographer and is trying to convince him to take the next step in any wholesome '50's relationship, marriage. Grace Kelly and James Stewart are inimitable in the respective roles. Kelly, with the finesse, polish and beauty which is her trademark, jousts incredibly well with the curmudgeonly, witty Stewart, whose character...