Word: witting
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Being the cleverest fellow in movies had its perks: six Oscars (out of 21 nominations), for writing, producing and directing. It also earned Wilder, from the sterner critics, the label of cynic. They said his films were long on wit and short on compassion. Pick up a rock, and Wilder's view of the human condition would crawl out from under it. Nearly 40 years ago, critic Andrew Sarris wrote, "Billy Wilder is too cynical to believe even his own cynicism." Today we can see that Wilder was less a cynic than a premature realist. An Austrian Jew who left...
Today American movies are sadly and irrevocably bereft of Billy Wilder's misanthropic humanism and sparkling wit. Now that's enough to make you cynical...
...Chinese director Zhang Ming's Weekend Plot was typical. Five friends from Beijing hang out in swimsuits on the Yangtze for about 45 minutes doing nothing. And then for the second half of the film, they do the same. Not a syllable of wit, a whisper of titillation. Jeong Jae Eun's Take Care of My Cat was similarly somnambulant in its treatment of the impending womanhood of five teenaged Koreans. Actress Bae Doo Na, who so lit up last year's Barking Dogs Never Bite, wastes her talent in this cinematic Sargasso Sea that sloshes but never gets roiling...
There are, however, flashes of Albee’s wry verbal wit and sneaky ability to shift the foundation of his fictional world. When trying to sort out the details of an affair, Martin’s best friend Ross (portrayed by American Repertory Theatre founding member Stephen Rowe) questions, “Sylvia––the goat who you’re fucking?” “Don’t say that,” responds Martin curtly, before correcting him, “whom...
...Romano), a saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary) and a sloth (John Leguizamo)--survives plot challenges of no particular ingenuity. The film breaks anthropological ground by revealing that humans lived in the Ice Age, but its contribution to cartoon history is more modest. It yearns for Pixar-style wit without quite earning...