Word: genial
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...certain class and ambition. Savoir-faire meant the aristocracy of style: which wine to decant, which brand of cigarette to smoke, which automatic weapon to carry under the armpit. Now that he was Roger Moore, 20 years later, Bond had degenerated into a male model, and something of a genial anachronism...
DIED. Kenneth Clark, 79, genial and erudite British art historian, whose 1969 BBC (and PBS-aired) television series Civilization brought him transatlantic praise and popularity; in Kent, England. An unhappy only child of the idle rich, Clark spent a post-Oxford two years in Florence steeping himself in Renaissance art. At 30, he became the youngest director in the history of London's National Gallery. Between knighthood (1938) and the award of a life peerage (1969), Lord Clark wrote a score of books, maintained heady friendships (Winston Churchill, Walter Lippmann, Pablo Picasso), and held an array of academic titles...
Such heresy is the trademark of the genial Ornstein. He listens patiently to the endless yammering of the special interests and the experts, then gently suggests that they step back and look at the forest instead of their own imperfect tree. "James Madison [the Federalist) would be pleased if he were here," declares Ornstein. "The best features of the checks and balances are in play. We are not being dominated by sets of insidious special interests. We are arriving at a set of centrist and sensible policies...
...according to hints, probably their last for some time both legitimizes and assuages such fears True. Life Itself seems rather a broad topic to attempt visualizing. And the proximity of the eternal verities (birth, religion, contraception, and the life of a waiter) have transformed the original Python tone of genial silliness to satire. But despite these signs of maturity, the group has evidently regained its comic fire--and the comedians roll around in their capacious subject matter with every bit of the old gusto and panache...
...back into your affections. This latest in Neil Simon's fantasies of generation-gap bridgework runs mainly on charm, not on the bile and bathos that fueled Only When I Laugh and I Ought to Be in Pictures. Jason Robards, the errant father, is as resourcefully genial as a Damon Runyon Santa Claus; Donald Sutherland keeps his dimples flexed playing a policeman who demonstrates his love of literature by misquoting the opening line of Joyce's Ulysses; even veteran Simonizers Marsha Mason and Director Herbert Ross find ways to relax into the material. What the movie lacks...