Word: bland
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...nothing better epitomizes our time’s bland character than the decline of Harvard Square...
...part of our world and, though often appearing to be normal, decidedly freakish. Her subjects are often that part of ourselves we refuse to recognize. “Fur” shows us people from another, imaginary world who, despite appearing to be freakish, are decidedly normal and maddeningly bland. It gets the formula backwards, and is all the less powerful for doing so. Worst of all, however, is the fact that we’ve seen this all before. Shainberg and Wilson merely repeat the formula of their previous film; but whereas “Secretary” felt...
...generations of women surviving the wild winds of his home turf, La Mancha, Spain--winds that blow in fires, death and some superfluous men. Volver is Spanish for return. Fittingly, with the film, Almodvar has reclaimed the Madrid-born Cruz from the lost- property department of blond and bland Hollywood, where she has lived for the past several years carrying the cross of exoticism through a series of disappointing movies and tabloid-tracked relationships with Sexiest Man Alive--type guys. With Volver, she is prompting people to talk Oscar. If she nabs him, she will be the first actress...
...Casey fight the CIA's secret wars and the even more vicious inside-the-Beltway wars. He must have driven the special prosecutor crazy during Iran-contra, sticking to the truth but giving up nothing that could sink the Reagan Administration. When Gates finally left government, he wrote a bland, ruffle-no-feathers memoir. He never talked out of school about the Bushes. He never took on the CIA in public or offended the rank and file. Gates is a company man, a loyal civil servant, a realist. Reducing him to a Bush family retainer misses his real character...
Conflicted is a tough attitude to convey, and it deserves partial credit for the book’s success. A book like this could have veered too far in the direction of condemnation and alienated hoi polloi, or fallen into bland history, which would have killed it before it hit the shelves. As it is, Savan sheepishly employs the same language that she lovingly derides, and one gets the sense that she was blushing as she wrote certain passages...