Word: raying
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Someone is blasting Billy Ray Cyrus into the courtyard. Let me regain my bearings. Hmmm, ghee? I don't know what you're talking about. Let me check Webster's. ghee: n. 1. A buttery milk concoction popular in Indian households 2. The sound one makes when they accidentally turn on the shower tap to hot, scalding water, i.e. "Gheeeeeeeee!" I'm assuming you're talking about the second one, Moop. And no, I'm too smart to do something like that...
...midday on a busy street in Hanoi last week, a three-car convoy pulled up to the sidewalk that runs along Truc Bach Lake and disgorged a small group of Americans. Leading the pack was a tour guide with a head of white hair, a stiff gait and enormous Ray-Ban sunglasses. "Here it is, ladies and gentlemen!" John McCain announced as he paced over to the modest concrete monument that commemorates the day in October 1967 when a Vietnamese missile shot down his plane and he was pulled from the lake by an irate mob. And unless you spent...
...pose questions: What happens if the Winklers struck it rich? What happens to people when they achieve their dreams? Because the comedy is broad and fast, the answers to these questions aren't particularly profound. But then again, the Winklers never really have a design on _being_ profound - both Ray and Frenchy are recklessly impatient. Both of them imagine happiness as a state that can be achieved instantly - Ray wants money, Frenchy wants to be cultured...
Giving away too much of the plot would spoil the pic's comedic surprises, so I'll give you a barebones outline. Woody Allen plays Ray Winkler, a lowlife, an impractical dreamer, who has to put up with the constant nags of his wife Frenchy (Tracy Ullman). Ray spends his days conjuring schemes - usually illegal ones (he's done some hard time - yes, yes, imagining Woody Allen surviving time in a jail cell is part of the humor, I'm sure). This time, Ray notices that a store next to a bank is up for rent and convinces his friends...
...know exactly where the character is headed. But Ullman never lets her characer degenerate into parody - she forces the audience to consistently question whether Frenchy is _changing_. Part of Ullman's charm is that she doesn't fall into Woody Allen's typical neurotic rhythms - her dialogue with Ray never comes off as "too cute." Allen, meanwhile, plays lowlife Ray Winkler like he does a neurotic Jew and it's effortlessly endearing as usual. His comedy is so singular, so impossibly unique that there's really no way for him to demonstrate range. Woody Allen plays Woody Allen in every...