Word: spunk
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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What can you say about a two-hour movie that died? That from its first frame it seemed to lack spunk? That within minutes it be came clear that the people who conceived it lacked even the false creative energy that healthy cynicism can sometimes engender? That it finally succumbed not just to its failure to evoke the spirit of romance, but to a misbegotten sense of its own importance...
...SPUNK of the quick parting shot, "52nd Street," confirms that Billy Joel is still full of life; but it is an unsatisfying end to an unsatisfying album. Joel said he wouldn't stagnate with the sound of The Stranger, and this latest album certainly represents a departure. But there is a loss of verve and expression here which disturbs the long-time Billy Joel fan. It's good music, but not up to Billy Joel quality. His success lies in the character that has pervaded his music, and on 52nd Street, we get it only in fleeting moments...
...tries to shave the price for the release of another son (Jeffrey Hayenga), he is executed. Finally, her mute daughter Kattrin (Frances Conroy), raped as a child by a soldier, is shot down while Mother Courage is away on one of her bartering expeditions. In the end, only her spunk and the wagon have survived...
...entire cast works with will and skill, and Patricia Elliott is particularly winning as a perky lady's maid with a tongue of salt and a spine of spunk. Ste phen Porter directs with stylish assurance, and equal praise accrues to Richard Wil bur, the translator-poet. His springy rhyming couplets carry scarcely a trace of melodic monotony and he turns Moliere's French into buoyantly idiomatic English...
...Invited by Photographer Annie Leibovitz to join Dolly in a picture-taking session for Rolling Stone, Arnold rushed back from a visit to Israel to oblige. The two got along so well that they finished off six bottles of champagne between poses. Dolly, 31, who admires musclemen "for their spunk and endurance," was very impressed with Arnold. Arnold, 30, found Dolly "the nicest weight I have lifted in a long time." Says he: "I did a one-arm curl with her. She was about 110 Ibs., good resistance. My biceps felt very good after that...