Word: aimlessness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...played by a sleek, sweet dream from England named Jacqueline Bisset. Her screen debut in the part originally scheduled for Mia Farrow-before she walked out on the movie and on Sinatra-is one of The Detective's redeeming features. Otherwise, this police epic peters out in aimless diffusion and in some of the most absurd juxtapositions of Manhattan and California location shots ever seen...
...hour and a half into Half a Sixpence, a horrifying word flashes on the screen: Intermission. Can it be that the spectator, already stupefied by an aimless plot, nameless characters and fameless songs, still has another hour or so to go? He does indeed. And what comes after the popcorn break turns out to be more of the same...
Although Clyde is a murderous ex-convict and Bonnie is his willing, amoral moll, they are essentially innocents: violence is something they can neither comprehend nor manage, and their dreams are always of settling down somewhere when hard times are over. When the two take up their aimless career as thieves, they try to see themselves as striking back at the haves on behalf of the have-nots-although there is no hint of ideology or social protest in their actions...
...What banner of rationality and what pretense of right justifies and permits such aimless waste? We must demand distinction between freedoms and their abuse. Clamorous dissenters, along with the silent majority of us, would do well to meditate upon the ominous words of the historian of Rome (Livy): "Then let him observe how when discipline wavered, morality first tottered and then began the headlong plunge, until it has reached the present stale of affairs when we can tolerate neither our vices nor their remedies." CARLOS M. BARANANO Detroit
Chosen class orator for alumni day 1950, Buckley submitted a speech rebuking the university for its aimless liberalism and lack of a sense of mission. It was turned down by a shocked administration. "They all figured I was a bright, facile guy who just didn't understand," says Buckley. "So, en passant, I mentioned it to a publisher. He was patronizing, but liked my brashness and said go ahead." In July 1950, Buckley married a Vassar Girl, Pat Taylor; in September, after a "hedonistic summer," he sat down and "batted out" God and Man at Yale...