Word: wizard
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ardent fans in filmdom, Begelman is a show-biz wizard who helped save a major studio from bankruptcy. To his enemies, he is a relentless competitor whose prominence and prestige reflect the mercenary standard of Hollywood. New York-born and Yale-educated, Begelman elbowed his way into entertainment as an agent. Among his early clients was Judy Garland; in 1967 she and her husband Sid Luft brought legal action against Begelman and his then partner Freddie Fields for misdirecting part of Judy's earnings into their own pockets. Judy dropped the suit a year later, but Luft remains bitter...
...billed as "a light program in which the guests play themselves," so Denis Healey, Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer, accepted the BBC's invitation to appear in a TV parody of The Wizard of Oz. Decked out in a red cape and his own extravagant eyebrows, Healey plunks Over the Rainbow on a piano and hams it up with the denizens of Emerald City. At the end of his appearance, he called for contributions to the IMF-the International Magicians' Fund, that is-and beamed: "You just wave a wand and suddenly find your pockets stuffed...
...infiltration of an informant into the top post of the United Klans of America, then largest of several major Ku Klux Klan organizations, was seriously considered in 1967. The plan was to organize a revolt against Imperial Wizard Robert Shelton at a Klonvocation and replace him with an FBI informant. The bureau finally decided it already had sufficiently penetrated the Klan...
Giscard and Chirac are united on one point: the need of the center-right parties to lure back "floaters"?voters who have drifted away to support the leftist alliance. The President has left electioneering rhetoric to his fiscal wizard and current premier, Raymond Barre, who has spoken of "enlarging" the center-right alliance and "welcoming new elements." Characteristically, Chirac was more hard-hitting. At an election rally he declared: "To those who left us in good faith and who now feel deceived and abused, I say: 'Come back to us!' " If only a small percentage of French voters abandon...
What lifts this film into orbit?and what saves it from being a shaggy flying-saucer story?is the breathless wonder that the director brings to every frame. Whether he is showing us a pristine, starry Midwestern sky or displaying Special Effects Wizard Douglas Trumbull's formidable arsenal of spaceships and celestial storms, Spielberg seems to be looking at everything onscreen as if for the first time. The freshness of his vision is contagious?and exhilarating. While most thrillers, including Jaws, manipulate the audience mechanically, Close Encounters makes it a partner in the film maker's quest for excitement...