Word: somersets
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...cold-hearted villain, complete with gaunt complexion, beady eyes and extended five o'clock shadow. The first of the principal actors to appear on-screen, we see him directly after the camera shows the ax being lowered over the head of King Edward's former favorite, the Duke of Somerset. After hearing of Somerset's death, Northumberland nestles back into his chair and with an admirable coolness, casually inquires, "Did he die well...
...narrative in need of streamlining, but it offers him a contemporary setting for his favorite theme: the pernicious lure of stardom, whether biblical, political or intellectual. His lyrics mix roguish wit (Bangkok contains the unlikely couplet "Tea, girls--warm and sweet--warm, sweet/ Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite") with the blistering bitterness of Evita. Andersson and Ulvaeus' score ransacks melodic styles from plainsong to Puccini to Gilbert and Sullivan to Richard Rodgers to Phil Spector to hip-hop, in a rock- symphonic synthesis ripe with sophistication and hummable tunes. The Shubert Organization's Bernard Jacobs...
...author calls "an overdeveloped inner life." Bernadette is a stinging portrait of stupidity (a pimp recruits her with veiled threats, and she mistakes him for a social worker). Blore is an overbearing ass who makes a big production about serving a modest Spanish wine and talks of W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence as if he has discovered the latest bestseller...
...what? Somerset Maugham himself thought the original film version of his novel Razor's Edge could run as a comedy, but Murray and Director John Byrum exude the fetish for self-seriousness of a philosophy student and the free-floating silliness of a circus clown...
...hard labor in a French coal mine), and it makes the earnest pilgrim a lot easier for his friends (not to mention the movie audience) to take. Besides, playful self-deflation suits Bill Murray, who only did Ghostbusters in return for a shot at the second screen version of Somerset Maugham's most gaseous novel. The laid-back eccentricity of his Larry Darrell disrupts the slick romantic parabola of the story, in a way pretty Tyrone Power never could. And provides a few conscious laughs to balance the unconscious humor that inevitably bubbles up along with its spiritual vaporings...