Word: backgrounder
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...What a horrific background and path to tread to attain world infamy. His mother the worst kind of thief, stealing guns so others could kill. A father who defected and was a traitor to the French government for which he worked. Ho, a hard man who literally butchered his way to leadership-an opportunist who rode every horse as long as it suited his purpose...
...Thadden vehemently denies that he or his party is neo-Nazi. His own background is impeccable. As far as is known, he was not a member of the Nazi Party, and his distinguished Prussian Junker family was active in the anti-Hitler resistance (a half-sister was executed by the Nazis in 1944). He is not a rabble-rouser by any means: he speaks forcefully but with little passion, devoting much of his speeches to denying charges of Nazism. When hecklers interrupt, he either rebuffs them with sarcasm or stands coolly by, purling on a cigarette, until the ruckus dies...
...searching for a mom -any old mom. By happy circumstance, Brandon is far less objectionable than Diahann Carroll's TV offspring, and he even seems to like his father. The show also appropriates a few gimmicks from contemporary cinema-stop-action photography, voice-over conversation and background bursts of rock music-but Eddie remains one of those programs that show the inherent dangers of borrowing from the neighbors...
...cast is merely reflecting the film's deeply split personality. Scriptwriter-Novelist William Goldman (Boys and Girls Together) purportedly spent six years researching his subjects, yet he provides them with neither background nor a sense of their own transitional time. Director George Roy Hill abruptly annihilates the nostalgia with a scat-singing sound track by Burt Bacharach at his most cacophonous. Coupled with a mod love song, Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head-wedged in while Newman does stunts on a bicycle -the score makes the film as absurd and anachronistic as the celebrated Smothers Brothers cowboy who played...
...Reasons of Health, where a character who is as sound and as stupid as a melon is kept in expensive quarantine in Teheran by an Iranian con man posing as a health official. Jacobs is all surface manner, often on the verge of lapsing into mannerism. Sentimental background music swells too resoundingly over some of his wry endings. Rarely touching the deeper implications of his themes, perhaps for fear of losing the rhythm of his routines, he often fails to provide enough serious relief to all the comedy...