Word: twitch
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...evening's tour de force is Act II of Tosca, with a lavishly bejeweled Galupe-Borszkh in the title role and the Hungarian baritone "Fodor Szedan" as her nemesis, Baron Scarpia. A much- brandished leg joint of a roast pig, a servant with an infectious body twitch and the wicked baron's narcolepsy (which becomes most pronounced during the heroine's stupendous singing of the work's signature aria Vissi d'arte) all figure heavily in a send-up that shatters every cliche in the trunk. Opera buffs can delight in spotting references to great, legitimate performances -- from Tosca...
...Nicholson's transformations that lie at the heart of the movie's success. This may be slam-dunk casting, demonic being the thing we most happily pay our money to see him do. But he calibrates his shifts to the lupine -- a cock of the head, a twitch of the nostril, a panicky glint in the eye -- with delicious subtlety. Mike Nichols, the director, finds all the right angles to enhance Nicholson's effects, which are wholly a product of the actor's technique, not a makeup artist...
...when the ruling assumption is that the entire population is brain dead, incapable of responding to anything but high action, low comedy or soft sentiment. The question is, if the expectations are so low, how come most summer movies fail so dismally to make even a few cerebral ganglia twitch...
...argue about most-favored-nation status for China -- and soon, inevitably, for Vietnam -- we will have occasion to be reminded that America's commitment to human rights is not just some kind of unfortunate national twitch: we can't turn away from the wish for freedom from authoritarianism because that wish is our country's fundament. The problem is that the hammer of MFN, rather than beating China into submission on human rights (not likely in any case), could deal a serious blow to its movement toward democracy. That fact is hard to face in light of such events...
...paper loop under the largest goldfish in the tub, and lift it swiftly out of the water. I watched the goldfish as it lay tenuously in an iridescent arc, its tail and head hanging over the sides of the fragile circle. In a second it began to squirm and twitch. Tail and head arched spastically upward to meet the other, reversing the direction of its parabolic arc. The goldfish's contorted torso drilled through the water-weakened paper, slipped bodily through the loop in a fluorescent shimmer, and fell, like a leftover firecracker spark, into the water...