Word: witness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...wit of that picture lay in its relocation of that classic device of the horror genre, the haunted house. Instead of being a Gothic pile isolated on a bleak moor, it was a spaceship visiting an unwelcoming planet in an obscure corner of the universe. But the situation was the immemorial one: a monster, in this case an alien life-form requiring human hosts for gestation, is stalking the spaceship's endless, ill-lighted corridors, picking off victims one by one. But there was only one creature, six frightened earthlings and little more subtext (or, for that matter, dialogue...
...never self-sentimentalizing. She is discovered as a silent little creature, scuttling through air ducts too small for the aliens to penetrate, living an almost rodent-like existence. Her plight would be enough to touch anyone's heart, but in this context, only Ripley has the time and the wit to appreciate...
...group of Marines includes Vasquez, the Hispanic tough macho lesbian, who ends up sacrificing herself for the rest of the crew; Hodgson, a dumb, smartass soldier whose terrified vulnerability in the face of the aliens makes him human after all; and a mean drill sargeant with a dry wit who has one of the film's greatest lines. Cameron manages to work in just enough comic relief to keep the audience from breaking down under the strain of intense fear...
Even the law's drafters were sheepish about what amounted to an admission that Government lacked the wit or the courage or both to make its own decisions on spending. "It's a bad idea whose time has come," admitted New Hampshire Republican Senator Warren Rudman, one of the bill's co-authors (the others: Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm and South Carolina Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings). New Jersey Democrat Peter Rodino, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called it a "flagrant abdication of congressional responsibility." Last week the Supreme Court leveled the ultimate criticism, ruling that a key provision...
Like many performers-to-be, Danny deflected attacks on his shortcomings (he was always small for his age) with wit and bravado: "Ever since I was born, I've thought of myself as a romantic lead." But not, initially, as an actor. There was the vagrant lead part in a high school play about St. Francis of Assisi. "I was in a brown robe," he remembers. "No shoes, no socks. The curtain wasn't all the way down, and just before we were about to begin, I heard my mother say, 'I think those are his feet.' " Still...