Word: puckishness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...long before Altman woke her from her pre-Hollywood slumber, Duvall had been collecting antique illustrated fairy-tale books. She was charmed by the stories, but bewitched by the pictures: dreamy Maxfield Parrish landscapes, bold N.C. Wyeth seascapes, puckish Arthur Rackham characters. While in Malta in 1980, playing Olive Oyl opposite Robin Williams in Altman's film Popeye, a vision of the rubbery Williams as a vain and manic frog prince leaped into her head, and the notion of Faerie Tale Theatre was born. Each tale would have different players and be colored by the visual style...
...puckish caller once asked Interior Secretary James Watt during a radio talk show whether his baldness was caused by acid rain. Watt laughed off the wisecrack, as well he might. In spite of rising concern in the Northeast and Canada, Administration spokesmen have repeatedly insisted that nothing could really be done about acid rain and the industry-produced sulfur emissions allegedly behind them until all the scientific facts were in. Suddenly last week, however, facts came raining down like a summer squall, in effect making further scientific debate on what mainly causes the problem all but irrelevant...
Only two characters come close to achieving that timelessness and universality which make a character endure. Ben Evett, who plays the role of Vindice with puckish bravado, and Peter Hansen, the Duke's bastard son of conniving mien, carry the play through its weaker moments. When Vindice again draws forth Gloriana's skull--this time as a weapon to poison the Duke, who unsuspecting that she is only a "shell of death" will try to steal a kiss from her in a dark corridor--he handles the scene with a deft blend of madness and humor that make the murder...
...timing. He can manage to be topical without sounding like every other pundit; he can venture into quirky subjects without seeming irrelevant. He knows how to provoke readers enough that they keep reading, but not so much that they angrily turn the page. He is a master of both puckish wit and ear-splitting indignation, yet on matters of moral consequence he can write with majestically measured restraint. He boasts of having taken the scalps of Cabinet members, congressional leaders and diplomats, yet he is quicker to offer a correction, or to let a target answer back, than almost...
...prepared for Orlando's audiences. Though gratuitously academic at times ("In an extraordinary passage in 5/8 time, considered outlandish and daring in the 18th century, Orlando crosses the river Styx...) and occasionally pretentious ("What is man? What is a man?), for the most part, the notes show the puckish sense of fun that characterizes the production at its best. "This will not do," Sellars writes, "and Zoroastro abandons subtlety and launches into his aria, 'Leave Love and Follow Mars: Go Fight!' (The Pentagon, after all, is what is keeping the space program alive.)" Or for Dorinda's final summons...