Word: ests
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Whose Life Is It Anyway? The strang est objects in New York theaters this sea son are plays that might be labeled terminal comedy cases. They highlight people who defend with their wit and ironic quips the right to die. This is the best of those plays, and Tom Conti, paralyzed from the neck down, is the most at tractive antihero in that we root for his decision to die and mourn the imminent loss of a vitally amusing friend at the same time...
...wonder, then, that the Cannes Festival is a perfect subject for Director Michael Ritchie, a satirist who has previously assaulted such institutions as competitive sports (Downhill Racer), beauty pageants (Smile), political campaigns (The Candidate) and est (Semi-Tough). For his new film, An Almost Perfect Affair, Ritchie went to the 1978 festival to record the goings-on in all their vulgar glory. He eavesdrops on the manic deal making that transpires daily on the Carlton Hotel terrace, the pretentious black-tie screenings, the endless parade of female pulchritude for commercial purposes. Such real-life luminaries as Rona Barrett, Edy Williams...
Later, he tries to describe his first wife to this woman. "She was a kindergarten teacher, then she got into drugs and moved to San Francisco. She went to est, became a Moonie. She works for the William Morris Agency now." In that throwaway speech he has captured the archetypal odyssey of our time. Wistful questings, the dopey cons with which our society too often responds, the inevitable end in materialism?they are all there in that ingeniously compressed comic moment...
...home, Tommy's gifts seemed evident enough. He did not begin talking until age two, but then he spoke in com plete sentences. He was soon memorizing advanced charts of human anatomy, and could whip his grandfather at chess at age four. But at school Tommy produced conflicting est results (once scoring low in mathematical ability, later achieving a very high score). Teachers frequently complained about his short attention span, and sent him to stand out in the hall to keep him from distracting the other children. Because of his undisciplined be havior, he was at first denied admittance...
...countless pseudo therapies that are now being peddled in the U.S. as panaceas for unhappiness, anxiety or worse. At one end of this therapeutic spectrum are such exuberant exercises in self-help as biofeedback and Transcendental Meditation; at the other end, close-order drill for the psyche, like est. All but trampled by this stampede toward satisfaction lies the battered body of the medical specialty that once held the exclusive franchise for curing all maladies of the mind. Obviously it no longer does?one reason why psychiatry itself is now on the couch...