Word: shtik
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hope job anxiety that has settled over this country helps postpunk bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam sell millions of records. And with megapopularity comes the rub for another cycle of suddenly-rich-and-famous rock performers: What is a boy to do when his splenetic-loser shtik wins him magazine covers and huge record contracts? How to deal with the heartbreak of success? By growing up. It happens. According to John Lennon's friend and producer Phil Spector, the edgy Beatle regularly joked about losing his edge. ''John would say, 'Jesus, Phil -- we're startin' to sound like...
Arnold cloned his good-buddy shtik for one of this summer's emerging hits, Nine Months, starring Hugh Grant. Next up on screen this fall is Big Bully, a dark comedy co-starring Rick Moranis. Down the line is his dream job: Arnold playing Ralph Kramden, created by his boyhood hero Jackie Gleason, in an updated big-screen version of The Honeymooners...
Ralph: A cynic might say she is using a marketable shtik, Wanda. Your dowager aunt can be counted on to ask about the children, but Ruth -- looking so tiny, wholesome and middle-aged -- leans forward sweetly and asks you what setting you use on your five-speed vibrator. It's a brilliant effect, a variation on about 40 familiar dirty jokes. It wouldn't work at all if she were a normal size, or if she looked and sounded sexy. Apart from two or three of those sharp comments per show, she has the wit to play the straight...
...worked too hard. In an attempt, perhaps, to place a discreet distance between confession and comedy, they allowed the tone of their script to become jarringly uneven. Barnard Hughes and Jessica Tandy, as Paula's parents, are repositories of senile pathos; Audra Lindley, as Richard's mom, is a shtik figureggressively annoying the next, with sutures provided by background music that never lets the viewer discover a mood on his own. One can still savor the moments when Reynolds and Hawn display their easy strengths: Burt's shrugged-off sexiness and decent vulnerability, Goldie's ditsy-pixie charm and daredevil...
Dunne turns some good Irish shtik. There are scatological scenes that Richard Pryor might envy. But too often the shocks and surprises are only gratuitous. An introductory note informs the reader that the settings for Shea's recollections are the two cities where the author spent much of his life. That would be Hartford and Los Angeles, though neither is identified. Instead, Dunne maps the geography inside Dutch Shea's head. It is a wasteland of appalling dimensions...