Word: backdrop
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...mess of a sinister imbroglio. Robert Benton, screenwriter and director, does a lot of borrowing, from both classic and more recent detective flicks, but does his cribbing in style. The actors, meanwhile, are heavily, and affectingly, into themselves: particularly the kharma and vibrations-obssessed Tomlin. With the same L.A. backdrop that the great Chandler stories grew out of, this one proves as well-oiled as the barrel on a Smith and Wesson Model 19 357 Magnum...
Like a ghost of politics past he sat with Harvard Nieman Fellows of the '70s. Pete Seeger had aged since the days when he sang in front of huge audiences, providing the musical backdrop for an entire decade. His hair and beard were grayer, his voice older, the lines in his face more pronounced...
...making it repellent. In earlier Fellini works like 8½ and Juliet of the Spirits, there was a fruitful tension between private fantasy and social reality. More recently, as in Fellini Satyricon, the fantasy has tended to overrun the reality. Here Casanova does not move against the rich backdrop the historical period offered but drifts through the bizarre misty regions of Fellini's own imagination. The episodes do not make up a narrative of Casanova's life, but a sort of meditation...
...pervading color of Ends and Odds is gray, a bleak miasma that convinces one character that "the earth must have got stuck, one sunless day, in the heart of winter." This backdrop accentuates the odd, vaudevillian turns that Beckett still keeps in his repertoire. He tosses off one-liners with apparent ease: "Ah, Morvan, you'd be the death of me if I were sufficiently alive!" His precise stage directions insist that props misfire with exquisite timing. He can make a character comment on a bit of stage business while implying a condemnation of life: "This gag has gone...
...books except Esther. Thus the scrolls have substantiated the reliability of traditional Bible texts and have aided new translations. Other documents such as the "Thanksgiving Psalms" and the Temple Scroll were unique to the sect. All in all, the scrolls have greatly expanded knowledge about ancient Judaism and the backdrop against which Christianity developed...