Word: bland
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...chords and sappy strings, music by rote, lyrics by reflex. Says one major record executive: "In the 1960s, commercialism and the heart of rock were pretty much the same. In 1982 the commercial center and the soul of the music are different. It's no accident that these bland, faceless groups with no defined image, no personality, no boldness have the largest-selling albums. They're the easiest to sell...
...more startling uniqueness of Cambridge/Boston, one which boasts a local scrivener whose words are read the world over." If the Express--which rejects pictures in favor of text--is to survive, it needs the sort of writing a few of its reviewers are providing, and not bland, badly written and slightly breathless accounts. It should be noted too, that the Publisher, the Associate Publisher and General Manager, and the Associate Publisher and Sales Director are all listed above the Managing Editor on the paper's masthead...
This masterful manipulation of the way a scene looks is what True Confessions so obviously lacks for the rest of the picture. Ulu Grosbard's bland and uninteresting direction more often looks like a television situation comedy than a major feature film. Not only are the colors and backgrounds either washed-out or meaningless, but their lifelessness saps the movie of any feeling for the location or the era. Besides the old cars and wide-lapelled suits there is little hint of where or when the movie is taking place...
...Bergen, her progress from dithery housewife putting fantasies on paper to multimedia celebrity, living out the American fantasy of success, is gorgeously bold. Her bravura is entirely selfconscious, but this once bland beauty has become one of the screen's most arresting comedians. Somehow she manages to stay likable-maybe even lovable-no matter how her character uses and abuses friends and relatives on her way to the top, which is defined here as a good old-fashioned suite in the Waldorf Towers...
...Best of the West, ABC is making another error by invoking yet again the "gang comedy" spirit of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Ed Weinberger and Stan Daniels, producers of Moore's show, Taxi and The Associates, should know by now that the basic format-a bland central character surrounded by screwballs -works only when the star has a patient and loyal following, as Moore did. Even with the best of casting, the TV audience hardly needs another gang comedy, certainly not a spoof western. Satire, like sacrilege, derives its impact from audience belief in the significance of what...