Word: brisking
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...Chief Petty Officer David Avery, 38, of the Royal Navy; brisk, authoritative and more than a little wary. Avery baked the official wedding cake to be served up to 120 guests at the Buckingham Palace wedding "breakfast" (noon to 4 p.m.). The recipe, he says, "is all in my head. It isn't written down anywhere, you understand. No, I will not give you a single detail." Avery and an assistant, Training Officer Lieutenant Motley, journeyed to the palace six weeks ago to give the bride-to-be an approving peek at their design. The batter had gone into...
...seem to grasp that I am President." The statement is too good not to be true. In fact, the entire Harding Administration is a humorist's despair; at a certain point, venality and incompetence simply transcend parody. Historian Charles L. Mee Jr. understands this. His brisk, hilarious retelling of the Harding saga resembles a series of blackout sketches. Facts are trotted out quickly, to speak and bray for themselves...
...this is sketched lightly and crisply. But when the leader of the association appropriates the manuscript of Fleur's just completed novel in order to use its plot as a blueprint for manipulating the destinies of his hapless sect, Spark performs her characteristic sleight of hand. Her brisk little comedy turns out to hinge on mysteries of good and evil, reality and imagination. The feat may be done no better here than in half a dozen of her earlier novels, but it is quite enough to bear out Fleur's assertion that "everything happens to an artist: time...
...ending is a preachy letdown, what goes before it makes The Fan a surprisingly worthwhile exercise in suspense, a bright, brisk horror show that someone over the age of 16 can sit through enjoyably. And profitably, since it provides an acute, cautionary portrait not only of an all too recognizable lunatic of our time, but of the enviable people and milieu that, viewed from his furnished room, drive him crazy. -By Richard Schickel
...blessings on everyone. The writers, freed of the fake historical-biographical imperative that weighed down their earlier effort, have lightened up and smartened up. Less is distinctly more when it comes to dialogue in this kind of movie, and the brisk inventiveness of the plotting helps too. Decent acting in movies of this sort is, of course, merely an extra added attraction-a sort of dish night for the sobersides. But Christopher Reeve makes his transitions from Clark Kent to Superman something more than a matter of fluffing up his cape; the man has a quiet sense of irony about...