Word: cleverness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...know it can be done, it is a challenge to figure out how it's done." Clarke said. "It's an intellectual challenge to reverse-engineer what God has done. It's actually quite amazing how clever the human body...
Tama Janowitz's A Cannibal in Manhattan surely will rank at year's end as the singularly most annoying book of 1987. Janowitz somehow has failed to make an amusing tale out of the clever premise of a marriage between a purple-skinned polygamist and a rich Manhattan heiress. Her story of a reformed cannibal, Mgungu Yabba Mgungu, a native of the South Pacific island of New Burnt Norton, who visits New York City and finds a wife is pretentious, irritating and--worst of all--just plain boring to read...
...goods. She won much publicity and praise for her first book, Slaves of New York, and Cannibal clearly is a hastily written attempt to capitalize on her sudden fame. The success of Slaves, though, was undeserved. That book, too, didn't have much interesting to say about its clever premise, namely that the cost and shortage of housing in New York City is forcing many young, single women into dependent relationships with older men who own their own apartments. Hence, readers were treated to endless, repetitious variations on the theme that these women are Slaves of New York...
...final struggle a floor above him, and why does the bathroom tile floor leak water?) The threat to Ellen's pet rabbit can be smelled three reels away from payoff; that hare is high. Lyne's visual style, with its grab bag of slick thrills and cheap tricks, is clever but unoriginal -- hack chic. And you needn't be a critic to get restless during the longueurs of the film's first hour. Just listen to the crowd. Until Fatal Attraction removes its mask of psychological drama to reveal a familiar horror-movie face, audiences can be often heard giggling...
...cast does fairly well in demanding roles. Prascak's script calls for difficult switches between disparate modes--such as clever word play and campy melodrama--and the actors always maintain their composure. Especially good were Bader and Adam Hyman, who played Raphael, Death's assistant. Although the procession of scenes was somewhat disjointed and hasty, an intervening week of rehearsals has probably smoothed many of the difficulties...