Word: ballooned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Reagan at least deflated the balloon of Bush, his highest-flying early challenger. Bush, the former envoy to the United Nations and to China, former Republican National Chairman and former CIA director, had modeled his entire campaign strategy on the one followed by Jimmy Carter in 1976. He hoped to win national attention in Iowa, as he certainly did, ride the sudden burst of publicity into upset victories or at least strong showings in the early pri maries, and then parlay those triumphs into the nomination...
...through an open French window and sailed through the air to land in a pond below, the inspector's uncanny Sang-froid has never faltered. Whether failing to pole vault a castle's moat or skimming across the Paris rooftops in a disguise that has somehow inflated like a balloon, or setting his nemesis, Chief Inspector Dreyfus, into paroxysmal eye twitchings. Inspector Clouseau has never wavered in his conviction that he is the world's greatest detective. It is this blithe, impenetrable side of Sellers, pared down and exhibited with art old master's exquisitely crafted minimalism, that is perfectly...
...third level is Fantasy, expressed in over-blown production numbers. At one point in the movie, Gideon watches from his hospital bed as a pretentious television critic tears apart The Stand-up, rating it half-a-balloon out of a possible four. Among her criticisms: "Razzle-dazzle obliterates story." Well, in All That Jazz, Fosse has integrated the razzle-dazzle into the movie's themes with solemn thoroughness. It's a clever idea to present a choreographer's nightmares as gaudy, Dantesque versions of Busby Berkeley, but the movie has four of these sequences and they're not short. (They...
...sing, Ethel, because we've been standing here freezing for two hours. Thus ran the mood after the opening pieties of this somewhat dreamily organized chilblain derby, when those in the audience who had not thoughtfully arranged to travel by hot-air balloon had to foot it through the slush for the three miles back to town. Eight marchers were treated at the hospital for frostbite. The bus system had broken down earlier in the week because of a labor dispute, but now, after several days of practice, it was breaking down spontaneously, without need of a labor dispute...
Cascades of balloons used to be a staple of political functions, back in the days when "party regular" was a title of respect and market research was just a glimmer in some Madison Avenue mind. Convention after convention, speech after speech, they'd release the balloons, each weighted with a drop of water, at the climatic moment. Today, the balloon drop is a dying art form. But for Reagan it looks appropriate; the huge plastic bag, pregnant with balloons, hangs from the ceiling of the Toga Room, waiting to deliver on cue. Nowadays, though, it's hard to find anyone...