Word: fiendishness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...broad. David Howard, one of Gelsey's two current instructors, describes the challenge: "Theme requires diamond sharpness, tremendous speed, a glittering technique. The Balanchine style is small, sharp, quick footwork." Gelsey's performance was in the way of a reprise. When she first conquered the ballet's fiendish demands at 17, she gave notice that she could do anything. Nothing she does now suggests otherwise...
This is why, in Obscure Object, Buñuel pulls the fiendish stunt of casting two actresses as Conchita, and then proceeds to interchange them at whim. It is his way of saying that the movie's subject is Mathieu's obsessive desire rather than the 'obscure object" that brings it about. There are many other rude jokes as well, all designed to pull the rug out from under civilization as we know it. Buñuel casts a dwarf as a professor of psychology and dreams up a clerical terrorist group called the Revolutionary Army...
...around and jumping up and down like a madman while his teammates stand around and giggle helplessly. Benson is a fair actor, but his part doesn't demand all that much besides wide-eyed innocence, with an appropriate burst of emotion. Spradlin turns in a solid performance as the fiendish coach, and O'Toole is passable as the lover. The worst thing about the film is a pitiful score written by that misbegotten little nitwit, Paul Williams, and performed by those masters of Muzak, Seals and Crofts...
Howard Hughes, who honed to perfection an almost fiendish talent for playing off his aides and lawyers against one other, would be delighted with the tangled mess he left behind. His death 14 months ago immediately set up a potential clash between his long-estranged family and the financially privileged insiders who ran Hughes' solely owned Summa Corp., which was founded in 1972 to oversee his vast holdings. At first, to almost everybody's surprise, peace reigned between the rival camps. But, after months of growing tensions, a full-scale battle for Hughes' fortune has now broken...
Annie is an abandoned child of the cruel Depression era. She is incarcerated in a kind of kids' San Quentin where the whisky-swigging warder, Miss Hannigan (Dorothy Loudon), mistreats her charges with fiendish glee. Loudon brings a hammy leering venom to the part that releases howls from playgoers, though her performance will surely appall any admirer of acting restraint...