Word: naif
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. LESLIE CHEUNG, 46, smoldering, pansexual icon of Chinese films and music; a suicide, having jumped from a hotel terrace; in Hong Kong. Though best known to American audiences as the tragic artist in Farewell My Concubine, he also played the soft naif (A Better Tomorrow), the wily warrior (The Bride with White Hair) and the demon romancer (Happy Together). Early death has assured his standing as the great tragic male diva of the late 20th century...
...course, about President Josiah Bartlet, whose show, The West Wing, down in the ratings this season, probably seemed like a better candidate for cloning when Mister Sterling was conceived. Sterling (NBC, Fridays, 8 p.m. E.T.), from ex--West Wing producer Lawrence O'Donnell, stars Josh Brolin as a political naif appointed to fill a vacant Senate seat. Populated with more straw men than an Iowa cornfield--sleazy lobbyists, nosy reporters, cynical legislators--Sterling plays safely down the political middle, making its stiff title character an independent. Like a timid primary hopeful, it has few convictions beyond pandering to viewers' feelings...
...against members of the Saudi royal family and others, alleging that they helped finance the 9/11 attacks. Sources tell TIME that 50 new defendants are about to be added to the list of 100 already named. Prime among them is likely to be Saudi Minister of the Interior Prince Naif. Another likely target is the Saudi American Bank (SAMBA), the kingdom's second largest financial institution, which is partly owned and managed by Citibank. The list will also include prominent Saudi charities, financial institutions and businessmen, notably Mohammed al-Amoudi, the multimillionaire owner of a lavish Addis Ababa hotel where...
These satires take one premise--a naif enters the cutthroat world of TV--and give it two very different executions. On Greg a floppy-eared puppet lands on a kids' show whose furry cast members throw hissy fits and pop Percocets off-camera just like flesh-and-blood divas. Eugene Levy and Seth Green make fine foils, but it's their plush pals who will have you in, er, stitches. The show defies good taste and gets away with it, as when Greg falls under the sway of an Al Sharpton-like puppet-rights agitator. ("This is going...
...hubris - and educating him in the ways of venality. (It's basically "The Producers," but without the gaiety, the color or the synchronized goose-stepping.) As played by Brian D'Arcy James, who has the young Neil Sedaka's face and prepubescent tenor singing voice, Sidney is a grinning naif who can't wait to be corrupted. J.J. takes him as a prot?g?, creates him out of nothing, to use him and then destroy him, return him to nothing: zero, with a bullet...