Word: gimmicks
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...trouble begins when Anthony "Baccala" Pastrumo Sr., one of five big New York Mafia bosses, decides to revive the old six-day bicycle race as a gimmick for gamblers. Baccala, who would rather tie a man to a jukebox and heave him into the ocean, cuts a moronic upstart young hood named Kid Sally Palumbo in on the action in order to pacify Palumbo and his murderous followers. Kid Sally, who "couldn't run a gas station at a profit even if he stole the customers' cars," bungles the operation and then sets out to knock off Baccala...
...announce that we would be landing shortly in Philadelphia, Philadelphia? Who the hell did the pilot think he was landing in Philadelphia? What about the man with the black briefcase? What were the airlines doing making such suggestive announcements when they couldn't deliver the goods? Just another gimmick, I told myself. They'll do anything to keep us distracted...
...quality of these works ranges from excellent to nauseating. But it is a fact that treatment of the theme has changed. "Homosexuality used to be a sensational gimmick," says Playwright Crowley. "The big revelation in the third act was that the guy was homosexual, and then he had to go offstage and blow his brains out. It was associated with sin, and there had to be retribution." These days a movie or play can end, as Staircase does, with a homosexual couple still together or, as Boys in the Band winds up, with two squabbling male lovers trying desperately...
Died. Matsutaro Shoriki, 84, Japanese newspaper publisher who brought the grand old game of besuboru to his homeland; of a heart attack; in Tokyo. In 1924, Shoriki purchased the dying Tokyo daily Yomiuri (circ. 40,000) and as a promotional gimmick sponsored visits by American baseball teams featuring such stars as Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. The tours were overwhelming successes, and the game soon became as popular in Japan as in the U.S. Today, Yomiuri's circulation is 5.1 million, in no small part because of the thoroughness of its baseball coverage...
Some of Wexler's techniques are a drag for his own medium of film. In one of the opening scenes he has his ideas about news coverage batted around in a cocktail party. A real bad gimmick. When the characters speak, they are making statements to the audience of the movie not to each other. A film should always make sense within itself...