Word: smugness
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Martha Coolidge is happy this week. Not manic. Certainly not smug. For the moment, and for a change, she is content with her Hollywood...
...Seven hundred years, that's enough." So went the slogan of some 300 left- leaning intellectuals protesting ceremonies for a nation they consider too rich, too smug and too hypocritical to rate any respect for its age. Even the voters of the central Swiss cantons -- loosely the equivalent of America's 13 original states -- opted against any spectacular celebrations. They judged it an environmentally harmful and needless extravagance...
...free to behave like -- well, men. For all the talk that Thelma & Louise is the first major female buddy movie, it is more like a male buddy movie with two women plunked down in the starring roles. The heroines are irresistibly likable: the gentle, bewildered Thelma, married to a smug, low- rent, philandering salesman who wears more gold jewelry than she does, and for whom, when she takes off, she leaves dinner on a child's partitioned plate in the microwave; and Louise, the world-weary, wised-up waitress who has waited too long for her lounge-singer boyfriend...
...from an America full of self-confidence." But U.S. officials deny they intend to be vindictive. "We're not going to use the gulf situation to make exorbitant demands," says a State Department official. In fact, a confident America may find it easier to deal with a rich, sometimes smug Japan. It is when the U.S. feels threatened that it attempts to contain its rival...
Unfortunately, she may have a point. The vacationing youngsters here are all vividly real -- except for rather smug Maggie, who is the pivot. Her retorts run along the lines of "What is it like to be like you?" to the bitchy Monica. When downcast, Maggie does not lash out but retreats to her room, where yet another chapter ends with quiet tears or staring at the ceiling. She is someone waiting to be -- a writer is hinted, maybe even a columnist. Quindlen's flaw is one of meticulousness: the smart energy of her journalist's voice is missing. But surely...