Word: polished
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...Gorbachev again and again surmounted the mixed popular feelings with his friendly spontaneity and sheer star quality. He reminded many Poles of another crowd-pleasing occasional visitor, Pope John Paul II, except that the former Karol Cardinal Wojtyla of Cracow did not need to have his remarks translated into Polish. At many stops, copies of Gorbachev's book Restructuring and New Thinking were thrust into his face by fans seeking autographs. Gorbachev usually complied, though when a young fan at a wreath- laying ceremony in Warsaw passed his green neckerchief for a signature, the Soviet leader demurred...
Brinkley also pays tribute to the lesser-known heroes of the Allied effort, such as Amy Thorpe, a British intelligence agent who used her "bedroom skills" with officials of the Polish government not only to steal a highly sophisticated machine developed by the Germans but also to figure out how to use it. Considered the greatest and most spectacular espionage achievement of the war, her action enabled the British to read Hitler's most secret messages and orders to Nazi generals before even they had seen them...
...spent the past two decades pondering, and two years preparing, the city's first International Festival of the Arts, which they too want to be everything imaginable. The result: a month-long extravaganza embracing 350 theater, dance, music, film and video events in 55-plus venues, ranging from a Polish troupe re-creating 17th century religious ecstasy in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to a water ballet accompanied by video projections at the Columbia University swimming pool...
...meeting outrageous mortgage payments for a penthouse. Likewise his success on the job ultimately is governed by nothing more than the fabled characteristics of Willy Loman. (He gets his shoeshine, while he smiles--and continues to trade bonds, thanks to the technology that Wall Street firms have devised to polish shoes while brokers make frantic trades on the phone...
These characters were not new with Lucas, of course; they spanned epic literature from Ulysses and King Arthur to the Lord of the Rings and Gormenghast trilogies. But Star Wars gave a high-tech polish to the rustic hardware, a kick to the old eldritch machinery. Alas, a decade later, everything new in Lucas' films seems old again. There is a shroud of inevitability, of why-bother, about Willow's chase through the forest (done better in Return of the Jedi), the impromptu ride down a mountain on a warrior's shield (done better in The Living Daylights...