Word: prop
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that is where Kuttner begins. The first and most entertaining third of Revolt is a narrative of the peculiar (in California what else could it be?) set of circumstances that led to the passage of Prop. 13. Mostly, it concerns the bejowled Jarvis and his trek from the lunatic fringe (Barry Goldwater disowned him as a fund-raiser in 1964 after Jarvis's "Businessmen for Goldwater" kept as "fees" $88,000 of the $115,000 it raised) to national celebrity. Within the context of the loony personalities, slick p.r. firms and confused politicians, Kuttner clears away the inevitable confusion...
...Prop 13 changed all that. In short, the measure rolled back all assessments to the 1975-76 levels, with only token increases for inflation. Only new homes would be assessed at market value. So homeowners, particularly owners of large homes, saved as much as $5,000, while modest homeowners saved a few hundred dollars. New home buyers--usually young families--gained little because their homes were assessed at the values they paid for them. Landlords earned windfalls, and renters saved only what their landlords chose to pass along--usually very little. The biggest winners of all were the corporate property...
...turmoil intensified. In Frankfurt, the deutsche mark slumped to a three-year low of 2.16 to the dollar, forcing the West German Bundesbank and the U.S. Federal Reserve into an unusual rescue mission of the mark. The two central banks each sold $500 million in dollars at midweek to prop up the weakening West German currency. In Zurich, the Swiss franc dropped into a two-year trough of 1.95 to the dollar, and in Milan the Italian lira plunged to a record low of 1,019 against the dollar. At the same time, the declining value of gold pushed bullion...
Neil Simon likes old times-the screwball comedy of the 1930s, to be precise-enough to revive the tradition, or at least prop up the corpse. In Seems Like Old Times (S.L.O.T. for short), he has updated Leo McCarey's delicious romantic farce The Awful Truth, this time with Chevy Chase in the Cary Grant role, Goldie Hawn as Irene Dunne and Charles Grodin as Ralph Bellamy. If the new cast spells magic to you, rush to S.L.O.T. You'll see Chevy stumble down an entire hillside and get his nose bobbed by a series of vengeful swinging...
Raging Bull is not merely the Jake LaMotta story, or a provincial vignette of life in the Bronx (although it functions on those levels); neither is it America; rather, it is a look at Scorsese's demons, with America serving as a prop. Violence extends beyond the ring to the crowd (where a woman is trampled in the crowd riot) to the church social hall (where drunks are thrown out by bouncers) to the Copacabana (site of a huge brawl) to the kitchen and dinner table. Cathy Moriarty, stunning in her debut as LaMotta's wife Vicki, is as beautiful...