Word: bland
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Shrinking Man worked well as a parable of mankind's impotence and heroism in the atomic age. Slowly and irrevocably, the bland hero withdraws into his Sanforized shirt, moves into his child's dollhouse, tumbles into the cellar and slays a now giant spider with a straight pin. At the end, when he escapes into the star-speckled night, he is so small he almost disappears into the universe. Microcosm and macro cosm are one. He has conquered his des tiny by surrendering...
...Micnael Cimino presented his "contemporary" epic of men at war--in this case, the Vietnam War--and, initially, it received universally enthusiastic reviews. Most critics ignored the film's contrived, overdone script and Cimino's bland direction, and praised The Deer Hunter for its emotional power. But, after having their tears jerked and their guts wrenched for three poorly-paced hours, many viewers recognized The Deer Hunter as a thoroughly racist, reactionary depiction of America's involvement in Vietnam. Cimino claimed he had set out to show what the war was really like. Instead, he made a hollow, melodramatic adventure...
Peter Sellers, 54, peerless English master of mirth, a man of many faces who slipped easily into parts as diverse as the crazed Dr. Strangelove, the bumbling Inspector Clouseau of Pink Panther fame and the brilliantly bland gardener turned presidential adviser in Being There...
...debate over the Dowling Committee's final recommendations. A statement prefacing the Student Assembly's constitution, ratified by students in 1977, promised that the assembly would "handle important student concerns like alternative meal plans, library hours and reserve policy, athletic facilities and tennis court fees, calendar reform, housing transfers, bland menus which also make it nearly impossible for vegetarians and some religious groups to maintain their diet, funding for new student groups, and much more." Thus far, the assembly has not produced a substantive change in any one of these areas. Instead, it has sponsored social events such as disco...
Worse, Weiner's direction is often bland and static. He sidesteps many potential moments of comedic action. This is nowhere more apparent than in the family scene of Act Two; there is virtually no movement. Visiting Mel's apartment for the first time in nine years, his overbearing sisters do not even give it a cursory examination...