The movie would have been much funnier, not to mention genuinely subversive, had it laid waste to both the pretensions of Sturdy Wings and the fantasies of Laire.
Interviews with several senior bank insiders paint a picture of two ambitious men who joined RBS within weeks of each other in 1998, both harbouring pretensions to succeed Sir George Mathewson as chief executive.
There is a rich vein of satire running through the story, which mocks both the pretensions of Italy's cinematic artists — who like to be addressed as "dottore" or "maestro" — and their increasing marginality.
We are both church organists, both distrust confident religious dogma and clerical pretensions, both love the Church of England in a grumpy fashion, and we have both been known to cultivate a fogeyish image on occasion.
Both have intellectual pretensions, give each other Picasso prints, quote Shakespeare and Baudelaire, and go to the theatre to see Strindberg's Miss Julie - but, by this time, Catherine is placing herself between them.
She is also a bedroom superstar who both mocks the pretensions of wannabe celebs, and – now she's a real superstar – provides a bridge for them between anonymity and fame.
In 1763 Hopkins won back the governorship, and signs of reason between the two men appeared the following year when Ward wrote to Hopkins proposing that both resign their "pretensions to the chief seat of government".
Gillian Anderson captures both Blanche's airy pretensions to grandeur and her desolate loneliness.
But here Gillian Anderson captures both Blanche's airy pretensions to grandeur and her desolate loneliness.
Michael Billington, the Guardian Gillian Anderson captures both Blanche's airy pretensions to grandeur and her desolate loneliness.
