Word: awkwardness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Things have been exacerbated very considerably by the state of emergency and by the detention of those whom the people regard as their leaders. The police and the South African Defense Force have been put into an incredibly awkward position in that they are not seen as agents for maintaining law-and-order but as protectors of an unjust system. In the consumer boycott in the eastern Cape, for instance, there are very strong indications that the police are harassing black traders, trying to break this boycott. We really are on the edge of a precipice. It would take nothing...
Indeed, the only serious miscalculation is the awkward, discordant and ungainly love music for Ferdinand and Miranda. Its grating quality is exacerbated by the strangulated tenor of Colenton Freeman, although Soprano Sally Wolf manages to negotiate Eaton's leaps with taste and dignity. A nod in the direction of convention here would not only provide some needed aural respite but characterize the lovers more effectively...
...graduates--"cut right against the integrity we were taught at West Point," concedes General Palmer, a deputy commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam. (His much criticized superior, General William Westmoreland, '36, was a cadet first captain and later superintendent of the academy.) The Viet Nam War is an awkward subject at West Point. In class, cadets are taught that the military leadership was not blameless, but most subscribe to a "stabbed in the back" theory. Says Cadet Borgerding: "The Army fought well, but their civilian leaders screwed...
...Faced with polls showing Labour still gaining, Conservative leader Michael Howard redoubled his emotional appeal to "ordinary, decent folk, who know that things are wrong but are being intimidated into silence" by Blair's crowd of trendy metropolitans. Nick Sparrow, head of the pollster ICM, pointed out this was awkward turf for the Tories, "banging on about second-order issues," while Labour, though tarnished, "focuses on the economy, schools and hospitals people care most about." Dull and worthy, it would seem, still have their place...
...Melissa’s teenage romance is very successful; it achieves a level of human emotion that the rest of the film lacks. There are no specific scenes that truly encapsulate this tone; rather, the brief touches of subtle emotion—furtive glances across the playground, an awkward conversation overlooking Central Park, a first kiss—are what make this small portion of the film so good. Duchovny’s camera captures these brief encounters as quick snapshots of isolated emotion that, strung together, approach the sublime...