Word: zillion
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Traditionally, biologists believed that life is a freak--the result of a zillion-to-one accidental concatenation of molecules. It follows that the likelihood of its happening again elsewhere in the cosmos is infinitesimal. This viewpoint derives from the second law of thermodynamics, which predicts that the universe is dying--slowly and inexorably degenerating toward a state of total chaos. Life bucks this trend only because it is a statistical fluke...
...loser). The star plays more than ever to himself; the cast stands around starched and embarrassed, like white-tie judges at a wet-T shirt contest. Wearying, stupefying, dumber than dumb, When Nature Calls would be a career ender for Carrey--except that a zillion people have seen it. Stop this, folks. It'll only encourage...
There are a zillion reasons for the collapse of the genre: preposterous production and running costs, the aging or death (often from aids) of top practitioners, the defection of others to Disney movies, the ignoring of a younger generation's pop-musical tastes. Says Michael Price, executive director of the pacesetting Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Connecticut: "In the Golden Age of the musical, what you had was a lot of producers who threw a lot of product up into the air and a couple of shows stuck to the ceiling." Now, musicals are so costly that producers...
...Cocoon, Gung Ho, Parenthood, Backdraft and The Paper, Howard splashed his vision on a huge canvas and peopled it with a sprawling cast. His problem was that in pushing a zillion buttons on the plot console, he often pushed too hard. Perhaps fearful of losing his audience, Howard would let his films get shrill or dewy. In Apollo 13, though, he has only a few dips into bathos (a too-cute child's face here, a dotty grandma there). Mostly, he makes viewers partners, trusting them to keep track of all the techno-talk, to take on faith what they...
...powerless to choose any of these things. Students who want a river view will wind up staring at the grass in the Quad; students who want weight rooms will get darkrooms; and students who want singles will wind up crammed into a walk-through suite with n+1 zillion roommates...