Word: unctuously
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...indulgent length (352 pages? How does a busy woman like Bridget find time to write almost a page a day?). And even fans will notice that the plots of the novel don't tie together as neatly as its predecessor. Whereas the relationship between Bridget's mother and her unctuous Portuguese suitor Julio was the plot lynchpin of the first novel, this time around the mother's adoption of Wellington, a Kikuyu who is much wiser than the muddle-headed, annoying mother, seems superfluous, included merely for the humorous possibilities. Moreover, the diary's focus on 1997, complete with references...
...drunk see...twin Stalins! "Drink a little less," Uncle Joe advises, and the limo roars off. This Stalin takes in the world with a savage candor. At a meeting with his hatchetman Lavrenty Beria, "I caught a whiff of that hideous cologne that Beria favored, the cologne of an unctuous headwaiter, the cologne of a rapist...
...book in the world. So I spent 10 very expensive days in Japan looking for some way to get that country into the plot. And I also tried to work in some sort of television-news element and the life of an unsuccessful artist and the dealings of an unctuous insurance salesman, all of which required a lot of research and reporting and proved to be dead ends. I practically have bales of discarded manuscripts...
...Hardy--think a snappier Saps at Sea--except that the Stan and Ollie here are Tucci and co-star Oliver Platt. Tucci, incapable of a gross moment even in the slapstick, seasick exertions of shipboard burlesque, nicely approximates Laurel's high, piping whine as counterpoint to Platt's unctuous exasperation. They are two actors stowed away on a '40s-ish ocean liner, ever scurrying from a British stage star who wants them arrested, gelded, dead. Also onboard are a deposed queen (Isabella Rossellini), a gay tennis player (Billy Connolly), a Teutonic chief steward (Campbell Scott) and a suicidal, sub-Sinatra...
...since March. It is just now coming to the screen, where Fred Thompson massages witnesses for the best sound bites and head shots, so as to maybe ? just maybe ? get regular people interested. And the wisecracking, straight-shooting Tamraz certainly gave it his all. But Thompson may find the unctuous tycoon to be a little too colorful: Tamraz is wanted in Lebanon for embezzlement, linked to the CIA, and allegedly lied to his investors about White House help for a pipeline that never came. In the end, Tamraz makes about as reliable a witness as Kato Kaelin...