Word: crystallize
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...popular host of the Oscarcast, Billy Crystal gets hugged by a billion people every March. He is a star, baptized in the mainstream -- partly because of his quickness of wit, partly because he's so darned cute. The particulars of Mr. Saturday Night's plot pay tribute to Crystal's landsleit: to Jerry Lewis (who began, as Buddy does, by lip-synching to Danny Kaye records), to Red Buttons (who had a '50s TV show), to Jackie Mason (who offended Ed Sullivan). To all the Jerrys and Jackies and Buddys...
...Crystal never forgets that a valentine is a picture of an open heart. As director and co-writer, he is careful to make Buddy a not-lovable guy, one who uses his wife (Julie Warner), his daughter (Mary Mara) and especially his way- too-long-suffering brother (David Paymer: excellent) as the butt...
...does Crystal constantly want to redeem Buddy in the viewer's eyes? Why does the film go so moist just before the final punch line? Any Buddy could tell you: because kitsch is not just an anagram for shtick. In comedy the two are soul brothers -- the entertainer's way of saying "Love me, laugh with me, laugh at me, hate me, then forgive me and love me all over again...
...welcome visitors to "the City at the Heart of the World." It is no idle boast. Cognac (pop. 20,000) exports 95% of its brandy, $2 billion worth a year, west to musty men's clubs of Manhattan, and east to Japan, where businessmen buy it packaged in Baccarat crystal at $1,000 a bottle. The French drink less and less cognac. "We've been switching to whiskey ever since the Americans liberated us in '44," says Jean-Luc Lebuy, a Remy Martin executive. He voted for the treaty, he said, because "it is the only way for Europe...
CINEMA Billy Crystal's hugely funny Mr. Saturday Night...