Word: bitingly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...major change involves the tax paid on capital gains-the profits on stocks, real estate or other investments that have been held for six months or more. Previously, as an incentive for private investors to expand the economy, the highest tax on such gains was 25%, a far smaller bite than that on regular income in the upper tax brackets. Under the new law, the tax on capital gains for many high-income people can be as much as 35%; under highly complex rules that add still other taxes, it can go up to 45.5%. At the same time Congress...
...growing arrogance as a director. In vain, we wait for some formal structures to emerge from the succession of images, as they did in 2001 (or as everyone thought they did in 2001). Perhaps, in relief, we hope to be whipped through the story with the no-nonsense bite and sardonic flair of the previous Kubricks. Instead, if you look closely, you can spot the same scene-setting dolly used three times in the first five minutes of Orange. (The only shots which Kubrick repeats to some purpose are two lateral truck shots in the writer's quarters...
...photos with an airbrush, immaculate precision of surface, and a taste for mechanical subjects such as cars, fire trucks and long expanses of shiny kitchenware. The average result is an almost unimaginably stupid and passive materialism-the boredom of Warhol's silk-screened photos without their threat and bite. Thus, confronted for the nth time with another perfect rendering of reflections on the chrome gizzard of a Harley-Davidson or the pastille skin of a Volkswagen, one is apt to recall Truman Capote's sneer (about another medium) that "this isn't writing, it's typing...
Wilson does not have the slashing wit of a Lenny Bruce, the angry bite of a Dick Gregory, the satirical punch of a Godfrey Cambridge, or the intellectual edge of a Bill Cosby. His approach is at once older and newer than that of the others. The message about racial injustice is the same as Gregory's, for example, but Flip sneaks it in and shakes loose a laugh before the audience can object. After telling a story about Indians, he asks: "How would you like it if you bought a $50,000 house and somebody came along...
...real theme of Sanford & Son is the generation gap. Son Lamont Sanford (Demond Wilson) struggles with his complacent parent in comic exchanges that, for all their surface harshness, are affectionately respectful. And Redd Foxx shows that the old man's bite comes from an essential warmth and humanity. Indeed, Foxx, who has written his own material for years, supplied some of his own acerbic lines. At one point when he had to refer to a black family who put on airs, he suggested using the authentic vernacular phrase "jive niggers." A less obvious Foxx contribution: the show...