Word: witlessness
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...with isolation: we live in this little village on the Potomac - actually, I don't, but no matter - constantly intermingling over hors d'oeuvres, deciding who is "serious" (a term of derision in the blogosphere) and who is not, regurgitating spin spoon-fed by our sources or conjuring a witless conventional wisdom that has nothing to do with reality as it is lived outside the village. There is, of course, some truth to this. Washington is insular; certain local shamans are celebrated beyond all logic; some of my columnar colleagues have lost touch with everything beyond their armchairs and egos...
...Hollywood genres. At best, nothing new; at worst, it died of exhaustion. The Morgans' writer-director, Marc Lawrence, has no special gift for character nuance or witty dialogue. To him, rom-com is simply the recycling of a tired fugitive-couple premise from other bad movies (My Blue Heaven, Witless Protection) and the application of the genre's most formulaic shtick-in-trade: forcing an uncomfortable intimacy on two people who don't like each other. (See TIME's top 10 films of the year...
...hairy deal, say cynics who were bred on gross-out horror movies. Show us heads exploding, chests busting, legs sawed off. Yet the packed audience at a late-night screening of Paranormal Activity in Times Square this past week didn't need gore effects to be scared witless. Yes, they knew it was only a movie - one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used "found footage" to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events that were dreamed up by writer-director Oren Peli and are endured by actors Micah Sloat...
...Witless Bay Ecological Reserve About 40 minutes south of St. John's, the small fishing community of Bay Bulls is the departure point for puffin-and whale-watching cruises through this reserve. It's home to a half-million-strong Atlantic-puffin colony that is North America's largest. A 90-minute catamaran trip with marine-tour operator Gatherall's, www.gatheralls.com, will whisk you out to Gull Island, which teems with birdlife during the April to August breeding season. From July, humpback whales begin to arrive: keep your eyes peeled...
...nicely. The authors have a bracing interest in suffering and death that knocks the cuteness right out of the book. When Dawsey remarks on how cheerful Juliet is, she bristles: "A sunny nature? A light heart? I have never been so insulted. Light-hearted is a short step from witless in my book." And in this...