Word: freak
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...ventures that followed, Reeve brought the earnest student's desire to learn and a self-described and often self-lamented perfectionism. It is hard to tell whether his approach to things is a product of what he concedes to be a "control-freak" tendency or of a genuine, deep-seated fear that most things are bound to go wrong. At the same time he has a determined sense--nearly grim in its seriousness--that whatever is wrong can, with discipline, be made right. The accident has not changed this basic attitude, though the nature of his injury is too serious...
...Eddy Arnold duet of the venerable Cattle Call, her voice breaks with startling ease and, in a microsecond, pole-vaults from barroom belter in the low register to choir girl in the high. If there were no feeling behind it, this double-jointed vocalizing would be only a freak talent. But Rimes either knows the heartsickness behind country songs or can fake it brilliantly. There is a hint of girlishness in the choice of some lightweight material on the album (MCG/ Curb), and her singing sometimes is closer to the full-throttle glottal attack of Brenda Lee, a precocious stylist...
Amelia faces her own problems, going through familiar phases with Bill the video guy (Kevin Corrigan)-or as she revealingly refers to him, "the ugly guy." To all outward appearances, Bill seems about as desirable as the freak-show films he tries to recommend to Amelia, we are confused and wonder if we should vaguely pity Amelia as she seems to pity herself. But Bill's actually a decent guy with his own feelings, not immune to Amelia's name for him, and, when he senses Amelia's doldrums, he tries to help, however clumsily...
...with due sensitivity, the handsome new Random House Compact Unabridged Dictionary (2,230 pages; $50) quarantines about 1,000 examples of jargon, fad words and lamentable journalese and corrals them into a separate "Addenda Section." The Addenda provides a useful glimpse into the netherworld of post-contemporary wordsmithery. Control freak is here, as are dream team, deadbeat dad, drive-by (shooting), granny dumping, latte, managed care, mosh pit, outsource (but not downsize) and wellness. Tattered cliches like reality-based, reality check and wake-up call, alas, refuse to die. Beyond the dread Addenda, Birnbaum says, the dictionary is sound...
...rest of the mischievous younguns are eventually rolled out one by one, name on the screen: the spastic freak-boy Spud (Ewen Bremmer); wanna-be Eurotrash, Sick Boy (Jonny Lee Miller); and the human pitbull (and unintelligible) Begbie (Robert Carlyle). Wandering about, shooting up, picking women up, and so go their days and nights. They even throw in a drug deal to wrap things up. Unfortunately--almost tragically, fizzing with this much energy and hype--the film quickly tosses out the window any pretentions to portraying addiction or free-wheeling, troubled youth. Adapted from the popular Irvine Welsh novel...