The Ultimate stingWritten by Holly and Shirley Yanez
The Ultimate Sting Looking for Harvey Weinstein Brassy, ballsy and full of energy. A totem of two women’s struggle to do something worthwhile in life, it certainly knows how to serve up endless comical observations. This is what comedy is supposed to be. The delivery, too, is polished, every line, every joke, enhancing material, making for a thoroughly enjoyable read. The women and their breathless brand of glamorous, gossipy, camp, snobby, self-deprecating, fast-paced banter is second to none but it is delivery that sells this story, as this story, is a reality they live every day. This out of box, true tawdry tale, brags an A list celebrity cast of characters for real but side splitting comedy is served up at expense of two unknown likely lasses from North of England. Two fatal mistakes, namely jailers, an anonymous pair of devastatingly handsome Latino American brothers, natives of Los Angeles and two Brits find themselves trapped in Hollywood where water list is more extensive than wine list, smoking is a hanging offence and cheese can only be found between athletes foot infested toes of every all American wannabe. Written in third person, it gives a voyeuristic peak into rarely told but more frequently experienced Hollywood; that is, if you’re a nobody.
| | No Stars for the EclipseWritten by Robert Levin
One weathercaster called it a “must-see light and shadow show by Old Master Himself,” but I can’t say this last solar eclipse was worthy of recommendation. Not even total, and staged (in my location anyway) behind a thick cloud cover that served only to diffuse vivid contrasts essential to any dramatic effect, “Old Master” might have been faxing it in from deep space somewhere for all incandescence it could claim. Quite frankly, as light shows go, I thought more interesting work was being done at Electric Circus back in '60s.Now let’s please not have any misunderstandings. I’m aware that I’m criticizing performance of a venerable figure who, over eons and in every conceivable form and category, has compiled an impressive oeuvre. If I have to confess that a lot of His stuff is not to my taste, that I find much of it heavy-handed or impenetrable (when, indeed, it is not distracted and slack), this doesn’t mean I’ve failed to recognize enormous contribution He’s made. I’m thinking, of course, of models some of His stunning manipulations of more volatile natural elements provided for Irwin Allen disaster films. And, to be sure, there’s His introduction of death itself which, brilliantly counterbalancing His earlier invention of genders and sex, forestalled unwieldy prospect of twenty-thousand expansion teams in just American League East (and, say, 2005 playoffs extending well into 2020 season). But that’s hardly been limit of this remarkable innovation’s reach and impact. In its absence, "Scream 2," which everyone agrees was even better than "Scream," would doubtless have languished in perpetual turnaround since filmgoers would have found emotions of fear and panic depicted in original much too weird and elusive for a sequel to ever be greenlighted.
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