Word: subplot
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Soggy Dove. In most of his cartoons, Oliphant gets in second thoughts, as it were, by using a little penguin called Punk, who furnishes a kind of subplot. In the underwater cartoon, for instance, a waterlogged dove, bearing a soggy olive branch, tells Punk: "Oh, I just hate this job." Another cartoon shows a striking telephone employee uneasily eying a solid wall of computerized dialing equipment. Down in the corner of the drawing, a miniature repairman informs Punk: "This strike may not work. That machine is a scab." Oliphant admits to using this slightly puerile device to lure the comic...
...western comes along that breaks new ground and becomes a classic of the genre. Stagecoach was one. So was High Noon. This year A Fistful of Dollars is the feature that dares to be different. It may well be the first western since The Great Train Robbery without a subplot. A man (Clint Eastwood) rides into town on a mule, kills a whole bunch of bad guys, kills some more bad guys, and then as a change of pace, kills some more bad guys. Then he rides out of town. Music up. Fade...
...Pistols and Petticoats, with the explanation that she "pretested" badly. Every time blonde and buxom Chris came on-camera during the screening, there was an inexplicable plunge in the graph line that records the composite reaction of the button pushers. Similarly, negative readings caused the jettisoning of an entire subplot from Pistols and Petticoats, and the replacement of ten other projected series performers. The previewers have even assumed script control over ABC's new That Girl. Bowing to the graphs, producers have ordered rewrites that will emphasize the heroine's acting career and change her boy friend from...
...conclusion is pallid; Author Sciascia's novel starts more promisingly than it ends. Much of its second half is given over to an incongruously earnest subplot concerning a Jacobin revolutionary and his bloody, awful torture at the hands of the government. Even so, readers who remember Giuseppe di Lampedusa and his Leopard's lament for a lost aristocracy will be amused by this compensatory catcall from the other side of the island...
...Cincinnati Kid is reminiscent of The Hustler. Director Jewison can put his cards on the table, let his camera cut suspensefully to the players' intent faces, but a pool shark sinking a tricky shot into a side pocket undoubtedly offers more range. Kid also has a less compelling subplot. Away from the table, McQueen gambles on a blonde (Tuesday Weld) and on the integrity of his dealer pal, Karl Maiden. Pressure comes from a conventionally vicious Southern gentleman (Rip Torn), whose pleasures include a Negro mistress, a pistol range adjacent to his parlor, and fixed card games. As Maiden...