Word: cons
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that august address for 21 years, the Swiss-born Haller retired in October, just as this reverential book was coming off the presses. Most of the recipes are for hearty, homey family favorites that reflect the regional backgrounds of Presidents from Lyndon Johnson (who favored Texas-style chili con carne, lamb hash and deer sausage), through Gerald Ford (lusty, German-influenced fare like sweet-and-sour stuffed cabbage, apple pancakes and a revolting curried tuna casserole), to Ronald Reagan (hamburger soup, roast-beef hash and, in more sophisticated moments, the Italian veal-shank dish called osso buco). Haller presents some...
...toughest job of all; the invitation to ham it up is virtually flashed in neon. Cobbled together from three stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the episode is a bit sketchy and disjointed, but Lloyd fills the screen with a funny yet carefully modulated portrait. Watch him try to con a tourist couple by rattling off a list of bogus screenwriting credits, casually mispronouncing Ninotchka. Or, slumped on a couch, lamenting to a friend (Dennis Franz) that he has come up empty on a script the studio needs that afternoon: "Put a fork in me, Lou, I'm done...
...entire multimillion-dollar portfolio walked into a Merrill Lynch outlet in Miami with a .357 magnum in his briefcase and killed the branch manager, seriously wounded a broker and then committed suicide. The customer, Arthur Kane, 53, later turned out to be a disbarred Kansas City lawyer and convicted con man who was living in Florida under a witness protection program. Despite the incident's odd circumstances, it crystallized brokers' fears; in one Queens, N.Y., office, brokers reportedly donned buttons that read, I AM NOT THE BRANCH MANAGER...
NORMAN Mailer put a new twist on the ex-con-as-artist theme a while back when he got felon and author Jack Henry Abbott released from prison and back on the streets, where he killed again. Although director John Hancock is a little less daring in his treatment of the theme, his Weeds is one weird melange of a movie...
Fortunately, there's also a series of unusual supporting performances. John Tobles-Bey as Umstetter's sidekick Navarro is lively and especially effective in the comedy sequences. He's a vigorous, charming con man. Ernie Hudson, as tough-guy Bagdad, sings "The Impossible Dream" in a scene which absolutely mesmerizes. It's a spooky, lucid moment in a movie that is often confused...