Word: tics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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That response is an ancient tic of the trade. At Central Casting, the tough, cynical reporter is as familiar a cardboard cutout as the prostitute with a heart of gold. This is the skeptical spirit that gave us Watergate, and though it has had no comparable success since (how could it?), the attitude persists. Without that spirit, he would insist, politicians would cheat and lie and always get away with it; government snoopery and police brutality would go undetected and unchecked; products would never be shown up for being less than advertised; wretched conditions, unreported and uncorrected, might bring...
...what I think. Isn't that surprising?" asks Feld, 34, a brilliant choreographer who seems mildly baffled by his witty, ribald new dance. "This ballet concerns some of my feelings about us, about America. It's [he tests the word syllable by syllable] op-ti-mis-tic...
...Hampshire is only one of many reasons to watch The Pallisers. In the grand tradition of The Forsyte Saga and Upstairs, Downstairs, the series is elegant, historical soap opera, complete with duels, lecherous dukes, love lost and found, intrigue in the Houses of Parliament, exquisitely smart costumes and roman tic settings amid the topiary...
Effective too is Leontes's occasional facial tic, and the moment when, as he says, "'Tis Polixenes has made thee swell thus," he violently grabs Hermione's burgeoning belly. After the Delphic oracle eventually proclaims Leontes a "jealous tyrant" and the others blameless, this Leontes even pulls out a dagger to stab himself and has to be restrained (incidentally, in the source from which Shakespeare took the story, the king does commit suicide...
...play is a plum for the actor who plays Ui. Al Pacino would be a hand-in-glove fit for the part. Not so. Physically, he slopes about the stage in a Neanderthal manner and adopts a metronomic, tongue-darting tic. He is good at evoking the image of a sometimes sniveling, sometimes snarling, power-hungry hood, but the role demands more. Ui must resemble a sinister Chap lin. He must possess a chilling, demonic mesmerism. Pacino displays neither...