Word: featherweight
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Daniel Bricklin, 29, and Robert Frankston, 31, a team of new-wave composers, have penned a dynamite disc that has grossed an estimated $8 million. It is not a punk-rock smash, but an unmelodic magnetic number called VisiCalc, the bestselling microcomputer program for business uses. The featherweight sliver of plastic is about the size of a greeting card, but when it is placed in a computer, the machine comes alive. A computer without a program, or "software," is like a $3,000 stereo set without any records or tapes...
Satie suffers most. His featherweight Parade owes its place in theatrical history largely to Picasso's sets and costumes. The story of carnival players trying to lure a crowd into their act is trampled by the arrival of weary soldiers from the front, still wearing gas masks. Nor is there any support from Gray Veredon's pallid, inert choreography. (Leonide Massine created the original dances.) As Harlequin, Gary Chryst works hard, but his role is never allowed to gain momentum...
...boohoo is chastened. I am secretly pleased. At the end of the featherweight fight he leaves. He will go toe to toe with a urinal...
Similarly subtle features of Welcome distinguish it from its acclaimed forerunner. Rudolph's script is very conscious of the need to deal with its characters on their own terms, without any touch of caricature. A few of Tewksberry's characters bordered on becoming stereotypes; Chaplin's featherweight BBC journalist and Shelley Duvall's L.A. Joan are cases in point. Rudolph skirted this chronic problem by allowing his cast considerable freedom to exercise their improvisational skills. While he did bring a finished script to the filming phase of the production, Rudolph still placed a premium on preserving a certain force...
...even the featherweight conventions of family entertainment allow for more than the cartoon characterizations and obvious knockabout farce of Mr. Billion. Hill, the Italian-born European star who is making his U.S. film debut, is sometimes wistfully appealing as he tries to live a western-movie vision of America. His best moment occurs when he acts out a favorite fantasy by clobbering Slim Pickens in a Texas barroom brawl. But when he turns up in the old fight-to-the-death on the edge of a cliff (this time in the Grand Canyon), with Perrine lashed prettily to a nearby...