Word: swanked
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with everything from a headless corpse to a guest appearance by the god Jupiter. Matthew Warchus' sleek, modern-dress version of Hamlet toys with the play as well, dropping entire characters (no Fortinbras), tossing in home movies of Hamlet and his father, and setting the early scenes at a swank big-band dance party. The conceit soon loses steam, however, leaving us with a fairly straightforward reading, sparked by the high-strung Hamlet of Alex Jennings...
...cultures created new elites. Jewish-American composers like Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern invented the popular song and dominated the field for a swank half-century. And as they had borrowed from Scott Joplin and W.C. Handy, so did they help bring black artists into the mainstream. Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker ran their astounding riffs on the backs of sturdy pop tunes by Jewish immigrants. This fruitful collaboration continued throughout rock's first decade, as Jewish kids in the Brill Building wrote teen anthems for the Shirelles and the Ronettes--pop's twilight of multiracial synergy...
Niccol, a young New Zealander, wrote the script in 1993, and wrote and directed last year's swank science fable Gattaca, which has much the same story (in the near future, one human man is surrounded by handsome humanoids). Niccol says the only source material he needed for The Truman Show was his own paranoia. "I often felt people were lying to me," he declares. But as the '90s devolved into media spectacles of Bronco chases, freeway suicides and Jerry Springer grudge matches, the conceit of TV as worldwide psychodrama seemed prescient. "I used to think the idea was ludicrously...
...AVENGERS (Aug. 14). Can a hit spy caper be spun out of a '60s TV series that few saw and fewer remember? Maybe not, but savor the swank cast: Ralph Fiennes, Uma Thurman and evil Sean Connery--finally the anti-Bond...
Next up was the David Lewis Funk Band jammingout on a few covers of songs by such jazz greatsas Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea. Overall, theLewis Band was a mixed bag: the trumpet andsaxophone players were smooth and swank, thekeyboard player tried too hard to be hip, and theelectric guitar performance was the best effortfrom anyone in the group. Though the Lewis Bandwas enjoyable and coherent, it did little to rileup the listeners...