Word: defter
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Craig Gillespie's direction is a little too attentive to the physical drabness of the setting, the slow pulse of north-country life, the locals' constipated cordiality. The story is a Lake Wobegon anecdote that Garrison Keillor would have told in 20 minutes, with a defter comic sense and more laughs. Even the movie's title could use some editing. Why not just Lars' Girl...
Most damningly, the film is devoid of humor. In using a clip from “The Daily Show,” Greenwald lets Jon Stewart make the jokes for him. A defter editor would have used the frequently absurd clips from Fox to comedic effect. Instead, the director elicits a few chuckles but misses the belly laughs his material so richly deserves...
...winning the first set 6-1. She blames mostly her shotmaking, not her nerves. "If I had had a backhand down the line instead of only crosscourt," she says, "I would have won two more French Opens." In her mind, she is getting better -- craftier at her game plan, defter at her execution. On court, the story is the same old sad one, the fluttering fall of an autumn leaf, glinting brightly and waving in the wind, yet fated to come to earth...
...knows that the antique French spoke with Oxford accents. Here, though, the aristocrats speak breadbasket American, while the servants talk with an English or Irish lilt -- a subtle joke on the imperialism of American culture. If there is a pitfall in this strategy, it is that American actors are defter at explosions than at epigrams. They are not trained, as the English are, to coil themselves in hauteur. So at times Malkovich plays the evil dandy too diligently; on his brow you can almost see the fop sweat. Then gradually he learns to trust the intimacy of Frears' close...
With Shultz now in charge of the Administration's hottest foreign problem, speculation arose over what he would do with that power and whether he could hold it. Did it mean a defter and softer touch in Central America? If so, would the White House and Pentagon hard-liners keep hands off for long? Shultz has never publicly differed from the Reagan attitude toward the region, so all of the fuss last week may signal no substantial policy change. "The policy is taking a hell of a beating in terms of credibility," observes a senior State Department official...