Word: raconteur
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Smith is much stronger as a raconteur, depicting the grief of a widow in Nagorno-Karabakh whose son was axed in half by marauding Azerbaijanis, or the fear of a Ukrainian farmer whose state subsidies are in doubt, or the shock of a lifetime apparatchik who faces opposition for the first time in his political career for his seat in the Soviet Parliament...
John Waters' teen musical is set in 1954, just before Ike gave way to Elvis. Waters, a genially deranged raconteur, has been inching toward Hollywood since making his rep decades back with scrofulous comedies (Multiple Maniacs, Pink Flamingos) from the Baltimore underground. His big-studio debut is a gaudy, affectionate memoir of his youth, when Drapes (punks) and Squares rumbled for the heart of a girl named Allison (perky Amy Locane). Waters' hole card is Johnny Depp, the winsome tough from TV's 21 Jump Street, who radiates big- screen grace and swagger as Cry-Baby -- no easy trick, since...
...grow up" button is pressed. Heather's blond head has several sensors that pick up sound, so it can turn and face the direction from which someone is speaking. Playmates, of La Mirada, Calif., has come out with Jill, ($150) a trendy twelve-year-old companion and raconteur. Telling a story about a haunted house, Jill might ask, "Should we go in the front door, the back door or crawl in a window?" The child's choice determines the direction of the story. Extra voice tapes include Jill's Slumber Party and Jill Goes to the Mall, complete with credit...
...grandly facetious to accommodate believers as well as skeptics. William Goldman tried all this in his 1973 novel The Princess Bride. His narrative had all the proper ingredients and all the right new moves: he deconstructed his text and undercut it with the cadences of a Borscht Belt raconteur. But on the page, Goldman's wordplay seemed too much of a jape. It needed the expanse of cinema -- where on the late show Errol Flynn and Gunga Din are still storybook young -- to revive the poetry of fable. Now, 14 years later, he and Rob Reiner have got it smashingly...
DIED. Howard M. Teichmann, 71, witty playwright and biographer of George S. Kaufman, Alexander Woollcott and Henry Fonda; of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease); in New York City. A stylish writer and raconteur, the Chicago-born Teichmann scored a solid hit on Broadway with his 1953 comedy, The Solid Gold Cadillac, co-written with Kaufman...