Word: witness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...premise is simple: contrive, however flimsily, to get Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor into standard comic peril-a barroom fight, a mistaken-identity bank heist, a kangaroo court, a venal prison system, a convicts' rodeo, a speeding car-then watch them wriggle out with their resourceful wit and eloquent body language. Wilder moves with the psychotic serenity of someone who believes everything will turn out O.K.; Pryor trembles with the neurotic certainty that everything has already gone wrong. Wilder's is the fantasy of the liberal do-gooder; Pryor's is the reality of the mean-streets...
...tradition-repeating every February its original cover of a dandy, Eustace Tilley, eyeing a butterfly through a monocle-The New Yorker has changed a lot. There have been two New Yorkers. The original reflected its founding genius, Harold Ross. ("Its general tenor will be one of gaiety, wit and satire," the prospectus said. "It will hate bunk," and would not be "edited for the old lady in Dubuque.") Its clever, brittle style survived the Depression but seemed frivolously out of sync when World War II began. So, war coverage was introduced, culminating in an unsparing report on Hiroshima by John...
...RAGING BULL is, as the advertisements would indicate, Robert DeNiro's movie. DeNiro combines all the wit and spontaneity and genuineness of a Method actor like Brando with all the craft and attention to detail of an Olivier. You become oblivious to the devices he's using: the way he takes the windmill motion of bodypunching, for example, and turns it into LaMotta's leitmotif. Things that DeNiro did to prepare for the movie--learning boxing well enough to become a good club fighter, for example, or gaining 60 pounds or whatever to play LaMotta in later life--have almost...
...victor's formidable mother, Miss Lillian, was freely available at the old railroad depot, dispensing her startling wit and candor. His brother Billy was cheerfully posing for snapshots at the gas pump, permanent beer can ominously poised. Even the President-elect and his wife were visible, making occasional forays to greet childhood friends or to eat at the nearest restaurants-every forkful watched for significance by a merciless post-Watergate press corps. A sizable slice of the citizenry willingly guided the influx of strangers round the sites-Jimmy's birthplace, his country home, his father's simple...
...ahead of the times and once in a while turned, bowed low, gave the times a razz and dared them to catch up. The slow songs were heart stoppers, the fast ones adrenaline rushes of wit, low-down love and high, fabulous adventure. The songs became, all together, an orchestration of a generation's best hopes and fondest dreams...