Word: unctuous
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Stanford-educated superachiever. The ancient senior partner (the wonderful British actor Wilfrid Hyde-White) is doddering ("I make my best decisions when I'm asleep") and autocratic, but often he proves to be the wisest person in the room. The firm's most unctuous, corporate-minded lawyer (Joe Regalbuto) may be a back stabber, but he is also a mean wit. When a liberal colleague talks about serving mankind, he replies, "Unfortunately, they're not our clients...
...that it would concentrate on humanitarian solutions and avoid, as much as possible, political recriminations. This was done primarily to ensure the presence of Viet Nam, whose policies of brutal repression and wholesale expulsions have been responsible for the flood of refugees. Arriving in Geneva, Viet Nam's unctuous Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Hien pledged his country's "full cooperation" at the conference, provided that "our national sovereignty will be respected and financial help extended...
...Europe in a touring car? She must be as delectable as strawberries and cream, a muse of delight, Goethe's "eternal feminine" luring men on. Sachs makes her predatory, poised like a pelican about to dive-bomb a poor fish. And Philip Bosco as the Devil displays an unctuous complacency that defeats the role...
Perhaps one key to Krueger's success is his unctuous style. He has never been much of a hell-raiser. John Womack '59, professor of History, who was with him at Oxford, recalls that Krueger "kept very clean, never swore, never complained, never raised his voice, kept to his room and his studies, said hello pleasantly, and fairly radiated that he wanted no trouble. If the rest of us got drunk and let the cows into the Master's garden, to eat his roses and tramp his poppies, Krueger hid for a week in the library...
Mosca, the Fox's Fly, is the oily instrument of his misdeeds. As played by Ben Kingsley, he is curiously modern, the unctuous image of the Madison Avenue p.r. man. "Mosca, this was thy invention?" asks Volpone after a show by his weird trio of dwarf, hermaphrodite and eunuch. "If it please my patron," he answers. "Not else...