Word: breans
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...press in the U.S. eat up Krispy Kreme store-opening stories, European media may consider a new doughnut shop in town as something less than newsworthy. "In Europe they may not have people sleeping in the streets waiting for the stores to open," says Kathleen Heaney, an analyst at Brean Murray & Co. And unlike Americans, who enjoy starting the day with sweet cakes, Europeans' breakfast tastes tend toward the savory. After all, a British breakfast tradition is a kipper, a smoked herring. Waugh insists it's wrong to consider Krispy Kreme doughnuts merely a morningtime food. "That's the great...
...wonderfully biting satire of the prevailing attitude which links show business to American politics. Two weeks before he is up for re-election, the president is accused of making advances on a Girl Scout; mysterious political consultant Conrad Brean (Robert De Niro) is called to resolve the catastrophe. Everyone gets brutally skewered in this film: politicians, filmmakers, actors, reporters and the credulous masses. The load eventually proves to be too much for the film to carry, but the film has to be admired for its sheer effort. Wag the Dog remains vastly entertaining even during its most tenuous moments. --Soman...
...smartest thing about Wag the Dog is that Levinson never puts a face on the President. We never really know--nor really care--about his status or his quest to be reelected. Instead, whether Brean will actually have his Albanian showdown remains more important...
...President, Brean decides, will stage a war over nuclear terrorism with Albania. "Why Albania?" the President asks with confusion. "Why not? They're standoffish. Who would trust Albanians?" Brean replies and so the question is settled. And thus begins the deliciously corrupt 'producing' of a war by Brean and Stanley Motss (Dustin Hoffman), a loquacious Hollywood producer who equates the crisis with the importance of maintaining a full tan. The war campaign is perfectly orchestrated--the President is photographed with random civilians posing as Albanians, clips that feature screaming young girls are shot on a soundstage and sent directly...
...remains vastly entertaining even during its most tenuous moments. De Niro, for the first time in ages, is wonderfully likeable in the antihero role. We should hate, loath, despise Brean for his shameless dishonesty--but we don't. Instead, we welcome his machinations and feel strangely vindicated by the possibility of his pulling off the scheme. Hoffman is the perfect counterpart to De Niro's smug political monster. He vamps and raves about how 'producers get no respect,' and we get the strange sensation that he is himself a unabashed politician...