Word: stiffs
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Alien and Prophecy have a common failing: they are scared stiff of stillness. There are no intentional laughs in either movie,and nobody smiles. The actors are too busy being realistic. And finally, the atmosphere of each becomes oppressive: the popcorn gets stuck in your throat. Existentially, Alien is more of a downer than Waiting for Godot. Beckett pins some hopes on the human spirit and personality; Alien presents people as walking red meat and pus for greedy lobsters...
Battle lines on SALT II were drawn months ago, but the all-out fight was delayed until Monday, when Carter and Brezhnev signed the treaty on a silk-topped table. Then the two men stood up and quite unexpectedly embraced. In contrast to the stiff formality of the summit talks, the moment was a warm and moving exchange between the failing Soviet leader, 72, and the vigorous American President...
...country set up a welfare state that paid tangible dividends. Because of its free medical and educational programs, Sri Lanka today has one of the highest life ex pectancy and adult literacy rates in the developing world. But from the 1950s onward, socialist governments imposed increasingly stiff taxes on business to finance a maze of nationalized enterprises and a complex web of regulations that controlled everything from trade to foreign exchange...
...nursery. In some way Chardin's absorption in the act of painting paralleled the absorption of children in their games, which he painted. One has only to look at the figure in his portrait Little Girl with Shuttlecock-the expressionless face and white shoulders jammed into the stiff bodice like an ice cream into its cone, the sequence of forms pinned together by accents of blue on her cap, her dress, her scissors ribbon and the feathers of the shuttlecock- to realize the truth of Rosenberg's insight: "The world that Chardin imposes on his figures...
...takes the name of Sam Marlowe (clever, huh?), gets his puss fixed to look like the one and only, and becomes a private dick in Hollywood. Hires a secretary who could stop traffic on Sunset but has the brains of a flea, tangles with a midget, finds a stiff by the name of Horst Borsht, and runs into a Nazi. You know, the usual job. This dead ringer has played Bogie in tube spots for Ford and Gillette, trench coat and all. He's 39, and not bad for a beginner. Now if he can only find a dame...