Word: gimmick
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...while we are on the subject of nasality, let it be said that the use of Ringo Start is a barren promotional gimmick. His role (Youngman Grand, Sir Guy's adopted son) was contrived expressly for the movie version and is superfluous from beginning to end. The same puppy-dog non-acting that complements flashiness so well in Hard Day's Night and Help is sheer stupidity (which is not inappropriate) in Magic Christian. The only thing cheaper than Ringo's name on the theatre marquee is Raquel Weich's above it. Her lucrative, careermaking breasts quivered expressively throughout...
...furious at the white shopkeepers' use of Indian religious symbols and bad portraits of Indian chiefs. Don Wilkerson, the Cherokee-Creek director of the Phoenix Indian Center, claims that a bar in Scottsdale, Ariz., has a huge picture of a great Indian chief on its roof as an advertising gimmick. "The Jewish people would not permit such treatment of one of their revered leaders," he says. "Nor would society allow Martin Luther King to be so humiliated...
...long months of bickering over how relief supplies should be distributed to the starving women and children of Biafra, neither Gowon nor Ojukwu looked good. Gowon was accused of using starvation as a weapon to force Biafra into submission, Ojukwu of using it as a public-relations gimmick to win sympathy for his people. In retrospect, it is difficult to refute either charge completely...
...trouble begins when Anthony "Baccala" Pastrumo Sr., one of five big New York Mafia bosses, decides to revive the old six-day bicycle race as a gimmick for gamblers. Baccala, who would rather tie a man to a jukebox and heave him into the ocean, cuts a moronic upstart young hood named Kid Sally Palumbo in on the action in order to pacify Palumbo and his murderous followers. Kid Sally, who "couldn't run a gas station at a profit even if he stole the customers' cars," bungles the operation and then sets out to knock off Baccala...
...announce that we would be landing shortly in Philadelphia, Philadelphia? Who the hell did the pilot think he was landing in Philadelphia? What about the man with the black briefcase? What were the airlines doing making such suggestive announcements when they couldn't deliver the goods? Just another gimmick, I told myself. They'll do anything to keep us distracted...