Word: wheeling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
WHAT WAS not tremendous was the show biz gimmickry, from stupid patter about Jim and Tammy Bakker to the vastly overrated spinning song wheel. This business detracted from the music itself--and for no apparent purpose. It is strange that someone like Costello, generally acknowledged as one of the greatest lyricists in music, resorts to pat jokes about the Beastie Boys, CNN News and Oliver North. It's almost as if he wants to start a second career as Jay Leno...
Leno would probably love the spinning song wheel, a towering and hokey trick that exercises an unhealthy fascination with Elvis. I've seen the damn thing three times now, and it's never been effective. It does provide a certain comic amusement for the first three minutes, but after that it bogs down the show as people have to be selected out of the audience to spin...
Part of the problem is that almost everybody picked wants to hear "Alison" and "Pump It Up," and Costello fixes the wheel to their tastes, destroying whatever suspense might arise from a truly random selection. True to form, the wheel at Bright yielded uninspired versions of Costello "classics"--a lot of dead time with no music and almost no surprises...
...childlike alien and his lonely human friend who must protect the creature, like a wise father with a brilliant, battered child, and then set it free. But Writers Stanley Weiser and Lawrence Lasker (WarGames) resist nearly every temptation to truckle, and Director Jonathan Kaplan (Heart Like a Wheel) finds each scene's emotional core while surrounding it with meticulous technique. But the film is Broderick's. A great listener, he can make a colloquy with a chimp seem like the meeting of true souls. This time, he has gone beyond cute, to acute...
...might have been sketched more elaborately. But a single scene of Tommy hustling an irascible old man (Tom Aldredge) across the street before the light changes conveys all that is needed. Trying to squeeze his car into a tight parking space, Tommy huffs mightily as he turns the steering wheel back and forth while his front-seat companion, the indomitable Tamkin, rattles on: a perfect visual metaphor for Tommy's plight. The makers of Seize the Day did not settle for translating words to screen; somebody gave this one some thought...