Word: plodder
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Beware of novels that allow the reader to open at random to sentences such as this: "Without any signs to steer me, I could only keep plodding along into the uncertainty of my future." The plodder here is one Dominick Pindle, a Massachusetts teen who makes the big, cinematic oopsy of falling for his father's other woman. Imagine the consequences, the confrontations! Sadly, you would probably do a better job than John Searles has in Boy Still Missing (Morrow; 292 pages; $25), a back-to-the-early-'70s drama of family misery and social devolution. It's an action...
Damon, who like Blanchett and Paltrow was cast in the film before achieving Oscar-night eminence, knows how to emit charm--of the aw-shucks variety in The Rainmaker or streetwise in Good Will Hunting. Here, though, he is a plodder. Pasty white among the bronze gods of Mongibello, striding stiffly, with nerdy glasses adorning his pinched face, Damon could more easily be mistaken for the creepy losers Hoffman usually plays (in Boogie Nights or Happiness) than for a patrician hunk like Dickie. The deglamorizing of Ripley pays off beautifully in his final meeting with Freddie, who sees through...
...young and fanatical Richard Crenna proving why he could have been a contender but wound up second banana to Stallone in the Rambo canon. (And, disappointingly, Candice Bergen as the love interest, to whose acting the cheap-shot term "wooden" truly does apply.) A bit of a plodder, but plenty of powerful stuff. The short happy life of Po-hang, a year before Cool Hand Luke, will tear your heart...
...considered visionary. "It's a plan for the future," says Lucie Salhany, Murdoch's charmingly high-strung network president, of the football deal. "It takes the network to another level." In other words, it's a 21st century thing, and if you don't get it, you're a plodder and a bean counter...
...expect Levin to make few sharp changes in Time Warner's direction -- at least not quickly. "He'll discuss, he'll debate," says Michael Fuchs, chairman and CEO of Home Box Office, Levin's corporate alma mater. "Jerry's style is not to make dramatic moves. He's a plodder with a lot of patience. He has the most long- term view in the company...