Word: asphalting
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...Asphalt Jungle cannot quite be considered a period piece because it hasn't been left amoulding in the MGM morgue long enough. Its interest lies, rather, as an antecedent to the Dragnet-type thriller. The tender first steps of that animal are unsteady and grouping; but as progenitor of a brood of offspring, its technical effects are interesting to watch in evolution...
Development of characters, by tracing their psychological and environmental background, seems to be director John Huston's central aim. The Asphalt Jungle, like its descendants, has no intricate plot. The emphasis must fall on the characters' past and how they react to the strain of the monumental crime they commit. Huston succeeds with some of his players and fails with others. The realism he tries to create is ofen shattered by weak dialogue and an implausible story. He has not mastered startling photographic technique. When these attempts at effect fail to divert attention from the stupid, simple plot, the suspense...
...herded onto one side of the street, and troops stood on the other, facing the crowd with rifles on their shoulders. Russia's Prime Minister and the Communist Party boss were greeted with almost complete silence as they rolled into the city along a two-mile stretch of asphalt highway completed only the day before with Soviet materials and equipment...
...universal home of the urban poor. Its children are grimy urchins, and the world scuffs them underfoot like dirty snow. But a Catford Street child may still skip to a dream of beauty between the slabs of concrete. This is the story of Lovejoy Mason, a ten-year-old asphalt sparrow, and her dream. A co-selection of the Book- of-the-Month Club for December, An Episode of Sparrows may well prove the book of the year for those who are not ashamed to weep over the printed page. Far from the Indian scenes on which she founded...
This book shows skill and ingenuity in the business of saying "boo" to grownups, but sometimes the "boo" does not ring true. While horror may indeed lie below the asphalt of a city's streets, one does not enter that world-as does Bradbury's character in The Cistern-by way of an actual clanging manhole cover. Life may end as a pickled monstrosity in a jar of alcohol; with Bradbury, in The Jar, that end is only a beginning. There are 19 stories in this book, but the best of the lot is more rib-tickling than...