Word: cleverer
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Thomas De Quincey's mother, who ought to have known one when she saw one, called the infant Thomas Babington Macaulay a "baby genius." From the age of three, "Clever Tom" was a compulsive reader whose idea of a wild childhood game was to act out Homer, reserving for himself the role of Achilles. At six, the future author of the five-volume History of England was at work on a compendium of world history...
...quest for entertaining copy, the critic all too often falls into what I call the "Time Magazine Syndrome:" the witty dig, the cutting remark, the clever put-down. It usually takes the form of word-play--perhaps a pun on the film's title, or on an actor's name. Sometimes the put-downs are more involved, bringing in associations from previous films, or the personal lives of the people who made the film, or aspects of the film itself. The one thing that all forms of this syndrome have in common is that the put-down is gratuitous...
Every critic seems, at some point, to be influenced by this syndrome; at their best, the put-downs are clever and amusing--at their worst, crass and tasteless. But what's always offensive about the syndrome is that it is antithetical to any exchange of ideas. It's much easier to come up with a put-down than with solid reasoning explaining why a critic disagreed with or disliked a film...
Jerry Jeff Walker. Ol' Jerry Jeff's routine of just being, heck, just ol' Jerry Jeff can be a mite wearing at times, but his songs grow on you. "Mr. Bojangles" is Walker's classic, but even on less distinguished tunes, you can count on some clever lines, a catchy melody and some good guitar playing. He is performing with B.W. Stevenson, whose "My Maria" was one of those forgettable songs you found yourself singing during economics lectures or unconsciously harmonizing with every time it hit your car radio. Through Saturday, March 30 at the Performance Center...
...like former tackle of the Detroit Lions, plays Mongo, a villain who storms into Rock Ridge and knocks out a horse with a punch in the mouth. Madeline Kahn, the nebbish circus dancer in Paper Moon, is a saloon singer who wails about her sexual fatigue in a clever ditty called "I'm Tired" (words and music, of course, by Mel Brooks...