Word: curmudgeoned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Blessing gives his characters a pungent flavor. Old John Law (Ray Fry), a legendary pitcher who is being honored, is a laconic curmudgeon who seems to hate baseball now and to have loathed the fans in his days of glory. Add on: the whisky-swigging, pot-bellied manager (Frederic Major), the clubhouse clown (William McNulty), the Hispanic outsider Jesus Luna (Dierk Toporzysek) and the multi millionaire superstar (Mel Johnson...
...disdain, Muggeridge overlooks an even more pernicious influence. As editor of Punch, he hears the magazine described as revolutionary. "Correct," he replies, "Punch is now critical of all authority,, including revolutionary." In so criticizing every human endeavor, in mocking not merely politicians but their constituencies, the curmudgeon eventually leaves himself no earthly attachments outside the self. It may indeed be that Ecclesiastes is correct and that all is vanity...
...Norman Thayer a retired professor rounding 80, Fonda plays the curmudgeon to the hilt. Thompson's script is very much in the Neil Simon mold since it is one great aggregation of one-liners, and Fonda gets the lion's share of them. The jokes are a bit softer and more countrified than Simon's bitchy repartee. but Fonda succeeds in putting enough spin on them to give the dialogue bite. His deadpan is convincing. He puckers up his chin a little and blows the quips out like a man nonchalantly shooting marbles from his mouth into a brass spittoon...
Harold Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior under Franklin Roosevelt, once got a phone call from the White House, and one of those self-inflated aides began the conversation with, "The President wants you to ..." The experienced curmudgeon quickly interrupted: "Oh, yeah? Then let me talk...
That amiable curmudgeon Ed Asner, also known as Lou Grant, looked over the agreement and politely disagreed. "I think it stinks," he said. "The results weren't even an approximation of our demands." Dismissing the terms for pay TV, he added: "I don't think any actor will get an appreciable amount of money out of it." Asner may have a point: many pay networks typically show a film no more than ten times a year, which would leave the actors with 4.5% of nothing. Some of his colleagues are as unhappy as he is, but may vote...