Word: wit
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...mostly the roots of The Island are to be found in every (presumptive) summer blockbuster you ever saw, especially the futuristic ones--or decided, upon mature reflection, not to see. To give Bay (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor) his due, there's a certain wit and splash (or should we make that splat?) in his action sequences--nice stuff with a flying motorcycle and a surprise-filled sequence in which the leads are hanging onto a skyscraper sign that's losing its moorings. But for all the menace of its techno-prattle, its implicit boosts for humanism and its swell production design...
...wit, Linklater says he would be willing to do an action movie. Or a sequel to School of Rock, or a third installment of Before Sunrise, perhaps the lowest-grossing movie ever to spur a sequel. "We all give ourselves a lot of leeway, but we want consistency from other people," he says, taking swings in his office with his aluminum bat. He thinks it's about a fear of failure. In the test audiences for the film, the kids were glad the Bears don't win the championship game, whereas parents weren...
...sung first by the poet Prunier, a sadder, wiser Rodolfo, whose prominence at the opera's beginning sets the tone for what is to come. The gradual transformation of the lovers' duet into a full-blown chorus in the second act is a magical lyric moment. There is even wit: a sly quote from Richard Strauss's Salome when Prunier describes his ideal woman, and a love duet that deliberately recalls the end of the first act of La Bohème. The melodies are supple and strongly defined, and there is none of the manipulative abuse of the heroine that...
...earned a reputation for being fair and open-minded. He tempered the paper's traditionally liberal editorial stance while solidifying the page's influence. As TIME's Thomas Griffith once put it, he modulated the page's "Ugh, Big Chief Has Spoken" voice, leavening its ponderous eminence with impish wit ("Helsinki, Schmelsinki," proclaimed a skeptical editorial on the 1975 human-rights accords). Now the family man can look back and thank Reston for his advice. Max Frankel stands on the highest step of the Times platform, possessor of one of the most powerful jobs in American journalism...
...woman and an actress of awesome gifts. Spotted playing a minor role in a Chicago revival of the play, she has an unusual talent for concentrating her emotions--and an audience's--in her signing. But there is something more here, an ironic intelligence, a fierce but not distancing wit, that the movies, with their famous ability to photograph thought, discover in very few performances. Children of a Lesser God, though given a handsome openness in Director Haines' production, cannot transcend the banalities of the play. But Matlin does. She is, one might say, a miracle worker...