Word: oafish
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...operating procedures of Marxist states usually follow a depressing logic. Marxism, with its incomparably oafish legerdemain, softens up the sanity by explaining that failure is success, and otherwise fulfilling George Orwell's expectations. The revolutionary "vanguard" clearing the way for the dictatorship of the proletariat develops into a "New Class" of privileged party officials and bureaucrats. The system runs by what the Soviets call blat- influence, clout, corruption. A new minority rule sets in. If it is not the dark, satanic will of Stalin, it has little to do with workers' wishes either. Although members of the ruling...
Brickman is fortunate to have the talented Arkin and his cohorts in this movie. Austin Pendleton as the playful, Machiavellian Becker, and Fred Gwynne '51 as an oafish Pentagon general are particularly effective in their roles, and Madeleine Kahn, though not blessed with a very demanding part, provides some of the funnier moments at the Center. They are all able to keep their jokes alive, and Arkin's evolution from minuscule plankton to neurotic 20th-century man should be recorded as one of the funnier scenes in contemporary movie-making. But one scene doesn't make a whole movie...
Brooks once said his team played "sophisticated pond hockey." Whatever its name, the style of the Americans is oddly schizophrenic. They ride players into the boards and forecheck -an oafish game. On offense, on the other hand, they strive -when they can remember their orders-to practice pinpoint passing. The weakness of this hybrid approach showed up in a big game against the Czechs. With a one-man advantage after a Czech penalty, the Americans got too clever by half: they fecklessly passed the puck back and forth for 1 min. 40 sec., until time ran out. All the while...
...Through their anger over Iran and Afghanistan, there also runs a thin current of self-pity. It bewilders Americans to be hated. It astonishes them to come off second best in a moral comparison with the Soviet Union, with the keepers of the Gulag and the Lubianka, with the oafish jailers of Eastern Europe...