Word: gimmicked
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...which a town's voting population meets annually to bicker, gossip, elect councilmen, vote on bond issues--are anachronisms today, surviving only in a few eccentric backwaters of Ye Olde New England. But the pseudo town meeting, as developed by the President and his imagemakers, is a ubiquitous political gimmick, practiced by candidates nationwide. Perfected in the President's 1992 campaign, the format is familiar to anyone unlucky enough to own a TV. A television studio--or a hall outfitted like a TV studio--is filled with a carefully screened audience. A local television anchor, his hair perfectly in place...
Apparently, Madanian picked a choice gimmick. Business picked up soon after the renovation and the store has since endeared itself to a score of regular customers...
...great El Nino of 1982-83, which left thousands dead and caused $13 billion in property damage. By last fall, however, El Nino had wreaked only piddling levels of destruction in the U.S., and the public was beginning to see it less as an impending apocalypse than as a gimmick to sell 4-by-4s and generate guaranteed laughs for late-night comedians...
Receiving accolades left and right, such that her comeback has become a gimmick in itself, Pam Grier's performance fails to hold up to close scrutiny--literally. She delivers lines in earnest or with meaningful pauses when her character's been found out, but the look and feel smacks of trying too hard. Looking concerned is not enough to convey emotion, nor does wielding a gun against evil men and "fighting back" correlate to credible passion, anger...
...with a language all its own, was what helped hold together the short-attention-span oddities of his first two endeavors. Now, shocking devices foisted upon this movie's stultifyingly paced plot and Grier's well-intentioned yet boring performance seem instantly tired. At one point, the "sudden shoot" gimmick--witness Tim Roth's character in Reservoir Dogs, or Pulp Fiction's poor victim of Vincent Vega's gun and a bump in the road--seems downright offensive, suggesting a world where such cavalier violence on a woman is far more disturbing and sinister than Tarantino blindly intended...