Word: bluffs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Lies and the cunningly titled Progressive Slidings of Pleasure. Simon Gray, 71, wrote for the stage (where many of his tart, smart comedies were directed by Pinter) and stayed there. Fortunately, his best play, Butley, is preserved on film, along with Alan Bates's brilliant performance as a bluff, self-lacerating teacher in domestic and career crisis...
...also Pinter's first political play: Jenkins is a refugee, poor and tired, the very definition of wretched refuse. Aston, who as a teenager was submitted to shock therapy, leaving him effectively lobotomized, can be seen as a victim of state-sponsored torture. And Mick is the bluff overlord, cracking jokes as he metaphorically cracks skulls...
...sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's bluff, hide-and-seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort...
...this moment of transition and of heightening geopolitical struggle, it is hardly the time for soft diplomacy. Obama, like the European Union, should join Secretary Gates in calling Medvedev on a preposterous bluff...
...being a wolf in a temperamental and frustrated old man’s clothing. Horseshit doesn’t work without a healthy dose of charm.” “For the record, I feel compassionate; that oughta count for something. Anyway, consider our bluff called. Even the old drones are turning tail: Brooksy, Lil’ Kristol, Chris Buckley and Newt Gingrich are so busy renouncing McBane on Fox News that our folks can’t get any airtime. Dick, you got any plans for reuniting the gang?” “Well...