Word: stiff
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...MISCASTING of the two lead roles might be tolerable if the supporting cast were not so weak. Bernardi performs well, but the other actors are stiff and deliver their lines with little feeling. Marcovicci in particular damages what could be some of the movie's better scenes. She speaks mechanically, as though reading her part for the first time. Her love scenes with Allen are spoiled by the combination of abominable acting and typical one-liners that belong in Play It Again, Sam, not in a serious film...
There seem to be two substantive ways in which the program could be reformed. A stiff core curriculum could be introduced or all requirements could be abolished. The task force on core curriculum has chosen the first course. It proposes that all students should be required to pick one course out of eight offered in biology, physics, math, nonwestern cultures, modern social analysis and political and moral philosophy, and one out of 12 in western culture. Other recommendations include the abolition of the language requirement and continuation of an expository writing requirement...
...Republican Party, the season of long knives has already begun. Ronald Reagan this week will huddle with his closest advisers in West Los Angeles to settle on a long-range strategy for taking over the party's creaky national machinery. Stiff opposition will come from other Republicans with presidential ambitions, most notably former Governor John Connally of Texas, as well as liberals and moderates who fear that Reagan's move would cripple the party by narrowing its base...
...three clownish waiters provide a fine atmosphere as the surly character actors in this sleazy Italian cafe; Skip Mendler is a nicely crotchety old man. Three in this cast, however, seem bent on annoying the audience--Jonathan Prince with his woeful mugging, Caryl Yanow with her too-stiff innocence, and Lisa Popick with a laugh of practiced exaggeration that ceases to be funny the second (let alone the twenty-second) time it is done. George Hamlin leads this production, rescuing an inexperienced cast with rigourously detailed direction. One gets the impression that he has told them exactly where every bone...
...stiff campaigner, Brock, 45, never managed to shake off his challenger, even though he spent $1 million-nearly twice as much as Sasser. The Democrat's big break came when the State Labor Council at a press conference compared Brock's extraordinarily low 1975 tax payment to that of a steel worker, a railroad engineer and an auto worker-who earn far less. Brock claimed that business expenses, charitable contributions and operating costs for a blind trust reduced his tax liability. Lapel buttons with the claim "I paid more taxes than Brock" began to sprout all over...