Word: wits
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...when Wojtyla was elected. The Catholics of that world, who often felt isolated and alienated by the Vatican?s high palace walls, were the ones John Paul II was determined to bring into his church. He proved to be a tireless traveler and a relentless evangelizer, taking his ready wit and common touch -- and a telegenic quality unlike any other pope?s -- to nearly every corner of the far-flung but fractured Catholic world. "He?s totally hot-wired the global aspect of the church," says TIME religion writer David Van Biema. "No pope before him has had this kind...
...place in a society of men and apes. Though it would be nuts to predict Lion King-size revenues (that film and its ancillary markets made Disney $1 billion in profit), it is also hard to believe the mass audience will find Tarzan resistible. In its pace, wit and poignancy, this is the movie The Phantom Menace should have been...
Some heroes took a giant leap for all humankind by journeys that were lonely by definition. The flight of Charles Lindbergh and the climb of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay showed where people can go on the planet if they have the wit and endurance. Their journeys were inward too, as all heroic endeavors are, but few in the century were more so than those undertaken by Anne Frank in her diary of the Holocaust, or Bill Wilson, who pioneered the 12-step approach to self-help that has transformed millions of lives...
There are parodies of 1920s dance-band music that make you want to revive the genre, and sweetly simple ballads, like All for You, that in an alternate universe might have been standards by now. Sondheim's wit is on engaging display in Exhibit A, a how-to guide to scoring with a girl, and What More Do I Need?, a cynical-sentimental tribute to New York City: "The dust is thick and it's galling/ It simply can't be excused/ In winter even the falling/ Snow feels used." O.K., Broadway, your move...
...political incorrectness. When she swivels aboard a cruise ship in clinging jersey and a floor-length leopard-skin scarf and matching muff, she handily offends feminists, animal-rights activists and good Christians everywhere, and she wins, because shimmering, jewel-encrusted, heedless movie stardom defeats all common morality. Her wit completes her cosmic victory, particularly in her facial expression of painful, soul-wrenching yearning when gazing upon a diamond tiara, a trinket she initially attempts to wear around her neck. Discovering the item's true function, she burbles, "I always love finding new places to wear diamonds!" Movies can offer...