Word: sam
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
That "Birthday Issue" [July 5] was a real bracer. Thanks! I needed that. Uncle Sam is durable. Growing pains? Yes. Mistakes? Perhaps. But no other nation on the face of the earth has offered so much to so many who had so little...
...exquisitely subtle geometrical painting by Agnes Martin, and some sculptures by Joel Shapiro and H.C. Estermann. But the art has been jammed into a Procrustean set of categories - "cultural irony," "narrative art," "objecthood" and so on. It all comes out looking pedagogical and unreal. To read Art Historian Sam Hunter laboring to convince himself and others that Andy Warhol (represented here by one 14-year-old painting) is really a narrative artist, although "nothing actually happens in the sense of conventional storytelling," is to witness one of the finer absurdities of recent writing...
Drawing freely from the classic characters of the whodunnit genre, Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marples, Dashiell Hammett's Sam Spade and Nick and Nora Charles, and Earl Derr Biggers's Charlie Chan are refurbished by Simon and his all-star cast, and introduced as Miss Marples (Elsa Lanchester), Milo Perrier (James Coco), Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), Dick and Dora Charleston (David Niven and Maggie Smith) and Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers). These, "the world's greatest detectives" have been brought together under one roof at the invitation of Mr. Lionel Twain, a fiendishly eccentric, rich, and rather repulsive...
...cast is so extensive that by the time all the characters are introduced to the audience the film is more than half over. For in addition to the five famous detectives and their host, there are traveling companions, the most notable of whom is Eileen Brenan, who appears as Sam Diamond's loyal but abused Girl Friday. Attending to the guests is a blind butler named Bensonmum (Alec Guinness) and a deaf-mute cook (Nancy Walker...
Despite the fact that the screenplay leaves the actors with nowhere to go in their roles, the performances are virtually all first-rate. Especially enjoyable is Peter Falk as the hard-boiled Frisco detective, Sam Diamond, whose uncouth manner provides an entertaining contrast to the cocktailparty elegance of Dick and Dora Charleston, played to perfection by David Niven and Maggie Smith, and the genteel prissiness of James Coco as the corpulent Belgian detective, Milo Perrier. Peter Seller's performance as the continually proverb-coining Sidney Wang is decidedly bland, however, which comes as a surprise and disappointment, since his impersonations...