Word: sillier
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...lost. The names of young directors (Arthur Penn and, unfortunately, Mike Nichols) are becoming good box office. Hollywood has even begun to conceive that the old directors had something to do with their films. Action, the Screen Directors' Guild journal, aped Francois Truffaut in a recent Hitchcock interview even sillier that Truffaut...
...whelming dangers or baffling situations. The word stems from the Latin superstitio, meaning "a standing still over," and connotes amazement or dread of supernatural forces beyond one's control. Rationalists scorn superstition as a hangover of primitive man's obsolete interpretations of the world. Indeed, nothing seems sillier nowadays than rituals like knocking on wood or chanting "God bless you!" (to prevent the sneezer's soul from flying away). Even so, modern behavioral scientists respect superstition as an enduring expression of the human need to master the inexplicable. "One man's superstition is another...
Most state laws are even sillier. Only ten states, notably Oregon, require anything resembling adequate income-outgo reports from both candidates and committees before and after primaries as well as general elections. Seven states totally ignore the subject; loopholes riddle laws in the other 33. Maryland limits spending but exempts postage, telegrams, telephoning, stationery, printing, advertising, radio and television programs, publishing, expressage, travel and board, if paid by the candidate...
...films, the last made in 1932. As Fu, "cool, callous, brilliant . . . the most evil and dangerous man in the world," Britain's Christopher Lee slithers in the footsteps of Warner Oland and Boris Karloff, and despite a vaguely Oxonian Oriental accent he doesn't look a hair sillier than his predecessors...
Director Seth Holt predictably but expertly flicks the finger of suspicion from boy to nursemaid and back again, and his choice cast can make even the sillier dialogue sound plausible. Still, Nanny's terrors remain doggedly low key, partly because every audience knows too well that an old spook of Bette's stature seldom leaves her dirty work to anyone else...