Word: wits
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Robert Morse brings back to life the author, wit, bon vivant, self-pitier and true enchanter that was Truman Capote in this Tony-winning one-man performance, now on national tour, in Los Angeles through March...
Best to savor The Grifters for its handsome design -- the picture looks as clean as a Hockney landscape -- and its juicy performances. Huston and Bening, sure shots for Oscar nominations, make for two splendid carnivores; they both have scintillating street wit and legs that go on for days. Cusack, as the would-be lion tamer, naturally gets devoured. And a swell sight it is too, a mother consuming her young, for the same reason a mama scorpion does: she's hungry. That's Jim Thompson's world, and now Hollywood is welcome...
...written that would not sound out of place in the mouth of God," George Bernard Shaw once wrote. But each age hears the Mozart it wants to hear, and today's audiences enjoy not only the exquisite serenity of this music but also its emotions, its subtlety and wit. Indeed, Peter Sellars' "modernized" stagings of the operas demonstrate a very contemporary sense of anxiety and unhappiness. Still, the music remains joyous and so eminently worth celebrating...
...then, does one suspect that Roberts has been more lucky than smart? Because there is an emptiness at the core of her charm. You will look in vain for, say, the weary beauty of Michelle Pfeiffer, the elfin intensity of Winona Ryder, the resilient wit of Jodie Foster, the cunning sensuality of Annette Bening. Most of all, Roberts lacks mystery. She does not seduce the viewer into wanting to know more about her characters or herself. She is not the engine of movie hits, only their ornament...
Still, for all its wit, the text (by John Weidman, Sondheim's collaborator on Pacific Overtures) has no obvious topical resonances -- and probably could not, given that the authors view assassination as arising from thwarted ambition rather than any ideology or cause. As satire, Assassins is pointless: it attacks people who have no defenders. As pop sociology, it makes points about fame, envy and media culture that were made far more richly in John Guare's The House of Blue Leaves. One is left wondering -- not least because of an imagined conversation between a would-be assassin and composer Leonard...