Word: freaks
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...look and should not be left in the dust of its bigger-footed, ham-handed cousins the blockbusters. In short, the movie's pace and generational eye tends to leave you giving lingering, meaningful looks at the world and its stories around you--the perfect antidote to the speed-freak pace of most summer fare...
...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...
PHENOMENON (July 3). The morphing is metaphorical here: a regular Joe (Travolta) is zapped with psychic powers and an Einstein IQ. Naturally, he's a freak to be avoided, except by one (Kyra Sedgwick) who loves him. Sounds sappy, but could work: director Jon Turteltaub has fashioned some improbable hits (Cool Runnings, While You Were Sleeping), and Travolta is a perpetual charm machine...