Word: worm
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...know it on sight. We sense that a Samson might have won her respect but never an "Abmaphid ... A.B. ... M.A. ... Ph.D." As "the bog in the history department," Gazzara's professorial George is detached but not desiccated. His wry grin portends revenge. He is a much trodden worm with a cobra's fangs. The less thankful roles of the subsidiary couple are less thankfully played. The giggly Anderman seems to have inhaled laughing gas rather than downed tumblers of brandy, and Kelton's Nick is docile enough to have made Martha's bed but never Martha...
Because I am squeamish, I cannot worm a fishhook or kill an animal, but when it comes to the La Guardia massacre [Jan. 12], I say the murderers should be disemboweled, their fingernails yanked and their eyes plucked...
...this charnel house, the kind of madness that Pasqualino perpetrated on a smaller scale becomes massive. To stay alive, Pasqualino must summon up his last reserves of cunning. In one horrible, hilarious sequence, he tries to worm his way into the good graces of the female camp commandant (Shirley Stoler) by making love to her. She is a lesbian leviathan who tolerates his attentions only because of his very desperation. She uses his appetite for life to debase him, and he allows it. He even agrees to preside over the execution of fellow prisoners. All for survival...
...moth ate words. That seemed to me a strange event, when I heard of that event, when I heard of that wonder, that the worm, a thief in darkness, should devour the song of a man, a famed utterance and a thing founded by a strong man. The thievish vistant was no whit the wiser for swallowing the words...
Korda dispenses breezy bits of office one-upmanship (jam a visitor's chair into a small space to make him feel powerless, speak softly to an elderly rival -it may make him think he is going deaf). Ringer's book is a heady parable of the worm (himself) who turned predator and earned a spectacular $849,901 in a single year of real estate wheeling and dealing. Despite the differences in style, the message is the same: death will come soon; meanwhile, there is nothing left to believe in but success and power in a cruel world...