Word: man
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...whole, I'm sorry to say, we're a failed species." Thus pronounceth Boris Yellnikoff (Larry David), a quantum physicist by trade and a raging grouch by temperament. "I'm a man with a huge worldview," this self-proclaimed genius says. "I'm surrounded by microbes." In his 60s, with a research career, an ex-wife and a failed suicide attempt on his résumé, Boris teaches chess to kids, whom he insults mercilessly. His few friends indulge his rants but think he's a little nuts, in part because he's the only one who realizes...
...ideal foil for Melody's cheerful resilience (which Wood winningly captures) and gives him a tart appeal, even when he's condemning the universe as "this cruel, dog-eat-dog, pointless black chaos" and his own film audience as "Neanderthals"--or when he observes that "while a black man got into the White House, he still can't get a cab in New York." Like Molière, Allen and David know there are few spectacles droller than a misanthrope in full fester...
...demonstration that opposites may attract, but they don't last. Taking a cue from Smiles of a Summer Night, one of Allen's favorite Ingmar Bergman films, Whatever Works liberates its characters from their conventional domestic alliances and finds new lovers: like with like, youth with youth, man with surprisingly congenial woman or man...
...movie plot of a successful career woman and her male secretary was actually a Hollywood staple in the '30s (Man Wanted) and '40s (Take a Letter, Darling), long before the setup was common in American business. Here, the underling role allows Andrew to direct the kind of barbs at Margaret that all secretaries wish they could say with impunity to their bosses. (For her to be sweet, he says, "is going to require that you stop snacking on children when they dream.") The Proposal also employs the antique device of the warring couple obliged to act like lovers. Margaret...
...American poetry, called him the "best poet of [his] generation." In Harold's most famous poem, "I Am in the Hub of the Fiery Force," he flashes back and forth between three or four rhythms like a virtuoso. He was writing about the agonies of being a gay man and an outcast in the U.S. before Allen Ginsberg. The Beats looked up to him. It was a tragedy that Harold never got the recognition that he should have...