Word: smalling
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...admittedly a small thing. It contains just four fully developed characters, who in addition to the leads include Sammy's overprotected son Rudy (Rory Culkin, the latest addition to the kid acting dynasty) and Matthew Broderick's bank manager, a comically annoying anal compulsive with a hidden concupiscent side. The latter gets a workout when it speaks suddenly to Sammy's trimly repressed side...
...developing relationship between Terry and Rudy. Terry may be a loser, but he's not a dope. His damage, and his sister's, stems from their having been orphaned as children. That accounts for her caution and his incaution. She thinks she has to keep her life small and manageable, so she has little to lose. He believes that since life is full of mischance, you might just as well wander and risk. So he brings Rudy along on an odd job where he teaches him how to pound a nail straight, involves him in a game down...
...naturalistic limits. He doesn't sentimentalize it or melodramatize it. He trusts the fact that he's exploring a relationship not much studied in the movies--the bond between brother and sister--to sustain our interest. He is content to keep his frame and his comic, angry surprises small. Yet a great intensity results from this steady, persistent compression. Maybe these lives are, objectively speaking, inconsequential. But they have a resonance that big, sappy "relationship" pictures ought to envy...
...Etymological debate is raging even as you read. Chad was the most looked-up word on merriam-webster.com last Friday. One possible derivation is from chat--small, white pieces of rock produced in lead mining. But what rock and paper have to do with each other (particularly without scissors) is unclear. Another theory, advanced by the New Hacker's Dictionary, is that chad stems from the "Chadless" paper punch, thought to be named after its inventor, that keeps the little pieces off the floor--ergo the pieces must be chad. "There is a legend that the word was originally acronymic...
Some people think Milton's dislikes extend to any form of competition. When a small regional airline started up in eastern Canada, Air Canada responded last fall with sharply reduced fares on some routes. When the Competition Bureau, a federal consumer watchdog, ordered Milton to stop price cutting on five of those routes, Air Canada hit back with a legal challenge questioning the bureau's constitutional power to unilaterally restrict fare changes. The case is winding through a Quebec court. Air Canada dived into hot water again in October, when a corporate official sent voice-mail messages about the airline...