Word: mephistophelean
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...Iron Man - directed by Jon Favreau from a script by Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway - Tony Stark is nearly a cartoon villain, though he's drawn in the bold, confident strokes worthy of a '60s Marvel Comic cover by Jack Kirby. He has a Mephistophelean goatee and a glint in his eyes that suggests this former boy wonder is a genius at wasting his genius. He's a devoted practitioner of pride, lust and avarice, to name the fanciest of your deadly sins. This is a man who has got it all: wealth, power, glamour, notoriety...
...With Mephistophelean good looks swathed in leopard-skin couture, Smith was a ready-made icon of the Underground, and an easy magnet for police and politicians. "Moral decay is spreading through our country and our society," declaimed one bluenose, brandishing a poster for Flaming Creatures - thus giving priceless free publicity to the film he meant to denounce...
...innocents abroad, naive Candides hungry for an education, spiritual or otherwise. Take the character named Gurney, protagonist of John Beckman's The Winter Zoo. Gurney abandons his pregnant girlfriend in an Iowa delivery room and flees to Cracow to join his cousin Jane. Jane turns out to be a Mephistophelean temptress of the first order, and she schools Gurney in the pleasures of the flesh, turning his stay in Cracow into an all-hours, all-you-can-eat buffet of food, booze, art and piquantly incestuous sex. What makes the novel work is that Beckman's Cracow has two faces...
...comingout party. No wonder then that it's a bland comedy that ends up reinforcing, not puncturing, gay stereotypes, and squanders a fine comic cast. Kline manages to rise above the plodding humor, especially in his show-stopping dance scenes, and Selleck is terrific as the sleazy, faintly Mephistophelean tabloid reporter who dogs his footsteps...
...puncturing, gay stereotypes, and doesn't get enough out of a cast which includes Joan Cusack, Tom Selleck, Debbie Reynolds and Bob Newhart. Kline still manages to rise above the plodding humor, esp. in his showstopping dance scenes; and Selleck is terrifically funny as the sleazy, sardonic, faintly Mephistophelean tabloid reporter who dogs his footsteps...