Word: deft
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bush on the attack from the outset, and the clock ticking away on the live interview, Rather pressed hard, and legitimately, for answers. Although he appeared agitated, his questions were informed, coherent and to the point. Even his response to Bush's remark about the six-minute walkout was deft under pressure. "I think you'll agree," he said after a few seconds, "that your qualifications for President . . . ((are)) more important than what you just referred to." Only with his abrupt ending did Rather appear snappish and rude...
...ferocious actress is joined by such other real-life viragoes as Dorothy Parker and Lillian Hellman. Baxt's comic turn mingles the actual and the imaginary like a pun-obsessed spin-off of E.L. Doctorow's Ragtime, and has a similarly political bent. Set in 1952, it sketches deft parallels between the paranoia induced by a serial killer and the mania generated by McCarthy-era blacklisting. The plot is merely serviceable and the cast of characters sprawling rather than sharply defined, but the machine-gun barrage of witticisms from its formidable ladies is either a well-researched compendium of bons...
Graphic novels use, as the comics have for some time now, a whole battery of movie techniques. An artist like Miller or Dave Gibbons, who worked on Watchmen with Moore, can storyboard a zoom, a cross-fade, a jump cut or a lap dissolve with a deft immediacy that would beat many directors at their own game. Indeed, for anyone used to working the controls on a Laserdisc or VCR, freezing the frame or strobing the action, the expansive technique of graphic novels will seem comfortable and accessible...
...compositions. Originally a 25-minute piece for the school's younger boys, it was expanded for a performance at Central Hall, Westminster, where by chance it was heard by Derek Jewell, a music critic for the London Sunday Times. His unexpected rave led to a recording. Lloyd Webber's deft gift for parody (the Elvis homage of Pharaoh's Story) and melodic invention (Joseph's moving anthem Close Every Door) captured a wide audience. "Without realizing it," recalls Rice, "we were breaking new ground by forgetting about Rodgers and Hammerstein...
GHOULS R US reads the legend on Daffy's office window. He's just the spook sleuth to help a comely se-duck-tress who needs some exorcise. There are homages aplenty to the old cartoons -- lascivious bulging eyes, deft wordplay (in pig Latin) and that bizarre sound effect that suggests a gargoyle gargling -- and laughs aseveral. The pace lags in spots, but any lulls allow the viewer to savor the glory of full, hand-drawn animation. And Daffy is as raffish as ever, talking like Freud or stalking like Groucho. At the end, three ghostly Shmoos chase Daffy down...