Word: mischiefism
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...problems in composing Answered Prayers. It is hard to see what worried him. The narrative relies on one of the oldest and most effective devices, the story within the story. Incantations of Proust aside, Capote was on his way to a spectacular best seller, an irresistible piece of malicious mischief inspired by the traditional detective thriller and the National Enquirer...
...victim at once too earnest and erratic for his own good. And Michael Caine is marvelous as his father, trying his best not to believe the worst about his son's fate. No movie actor works more patiently to achieve his emotional effects. No matter what stimulating mischief the young folks of British cinema are up to, one prays that the sun never sets on him or on this greatest of English movie genres...
...high-spirited adolescent commits an act of mischief. He and his buddies comically conspire to keep it secret from the adult world. Ultimately, though, the secret will out, and everyone draws a little closer together in a heartwarming and chucklesome conclusion. That plot is one of the stupefying conventions of movies about teenagers...
...what if the adolescent is a sullen, inarticulate psychotic? And what if he commits murder, not mischief? And what if his crowd, which contains no Molly Ringwalds or Matthew Brodericks and is led by a perpetually jumped-up speed freak (daringly played by Crispin Glover), still attempts to protect him from the law's vengeance...
...show. MacDonald, who should know about such things, is worried that his friend is succumbing to the tyranny of a popular formula. "One never rides with anything," he warns, "because that is the way to dull up the world. One tries to improve everything with the tools available: imagination, mischief, irony and the marvelous knowledge that the world is mad." Rowan seems to agree, agonizing about his struggles with producers and network honchos, his efforts to break up the partnership with Martin, and above all his disenchantment with Laugh-In (whose life cycle, he fears, "will be a death cycle...