Word: crisp
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When you first see Michael Bennett at work, you could mistake him for a revival preacher: sweating, pacing in his crisp vest and raving hoarsely into a microphone. Bennett is actually a car salesman--not just any car salesman, mind you, but the Slasher. Hired by local car lots--at $12,000 a pop--he flies across the country to set up inventory-clearing extravaganzas, his arrival heralded by obnoxious radio commercials. ("Armed with a savings chainsaw! Slicing high prices!") Like an itinerant evangelist, he rolls into town, sets up his tent and spends 72 hours infusing the customers with...
...hard to make his subject more entertaining. When Bennett talks about the reputation of car salesmen as liars, the director glibly inserts a montage of quotes from Presidents ("I am not a crook," etc.). But mostly Slasher lets Bennett and the customers tell their stories, abetted by only crisp editing and a sound track of Stax soul tunes. It's an acute yet nonjudgmental picture of a crusade that will continue long after the buyers drive home in their sputtering purchases and the Slasher heads for another town to preach his American gospel of hope and redemption...
...Hope, Julie Andrews, Streisand and dozens of others did. Why would any young person would want to be part of this antique, dead-end genre? It's like dreaming of becoming a hat blocker or a Yiddish scholar. What kid in the hinterlands would even know that a clear, crisp Broadway vocal style exists, when "American Idol" teaches that pop crooning is a demonstration of wild vibrato work and orgasmic emoting? My friend, the distinguished actor George Grizzard, watches "American Idol" and shouts with exasperation at the TV screen: "Just sing the goddamn song...
...graphic pictures was published in London's Daily Mirror, which appeared to show, among other things, an Iraqi prisoner being beaten and urinated upon by his British army captors. The scenes drew horror and condemnation in a country in which the military usually prides itself on its crisp professionalism. "We went to Iraq to get rid of that type of thing," said Prime Minister Tony Blair...
...introduced an eclecticism borne of period-specific fashion and anachronistic music that was to run throughout the remainder of the show. Elegantly clad couples in dresses and suits reminiscent of 50s-era film noir strutted to the amplified beats of Method Man and Q-Tip, the crisp purity of the lights effectively evoking what the program called the “simple, clean and classic” characteristic of Hollywood’s early films...