Word: tartness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...General, stands accused of hurting with her controversial remarks about antiabortion activists (they have a "love affair with the fetus," and so on). Elders is, as TIME put it, "a verbal bomb thrower." The sensitivities of Roman Catholics and Fundamentalist Protestants were said to have been offended by her tart tongue. No doubt she wishes that she had bitten her tongue on an occasion or two. If that is not promotion of a stifling orthodoxy, what...
...best Shakespeare on film -- a photo finish between Olivier's Richard III and Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight -- but it may be the best movie Shakespeare. The skirmish of will and wit between Benedick (Branagh, never so charming a screen presence) and Beatrice (his wife Emma Thompson, here tart and intense) plays like a prime episode of Cheers. The characters' passions seem not revived but experienced afresh. There is wrenching melodrama in the perfidy that estranges the innocent lovers Hero (Kate Beckinsale) and Claudio (Robert Sean Leonard, a wonderfully vulnerable puppy-lover...
...speech is vintage Rudnick -- a party wine with a bouquet of sentiment and the kick of rude truth. To the tart social wit of gay writers from Oscar Wilde to Joe Orton he adds irrepressible high spirits -- a tonic when so much of literature has the terminal glums. This Renaissance jester is a yea-sayer, a missionary for joy. "Usually when I'm asked why I write," says Rudnick, 35, "I reply, 'To avoid a day job.' But the truth is that there are people in real life I want to honor. It's easy to write about despair...
...match made in Washington: James Carville, the cunning Cajun who strategized Bill Clinton into the White House, and Mary Matalin, the tart- tongued political director who hoped to do the same for George Bush. They are one of the capital's legendary items -- and last week they okayed a seven- figure deal to tell all about their liaison and the backstage world of presidential campaigning...
FACING UP TO WIDOWHOOD, LUCILLE (Diane Ladd) fakes merriness, Doris (Olympia Dukakis) makes a tart-tongued second career out of mourning, and Esther (Ellen Burstyn) remains awash in vulnerability. They are THE CEMETERY CLUB -- three nice middle-aged, middle-class Jewish ladies trying to live out their leftover lives. When Esther crosses class lines to embark tentatively on a relationship with Ben (Danny Aiello), who drives a cab, her pals send up a chorus of envy and disapproval. The acting is sharp, and Bill Duke's direction is realistically grounded. But writer Ivan Menchell Neil Simonizes loss...