Word: blanding
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...draws audience empathy like iron filings to a magnet. But there’s more to Dewis’ turn than that; he hinted at a talent for understatement in Roberto Zucco earlier this season, and here he makes good on that promise. His performance is restrained, but neither bland nor mannered; it’s unpredictable and insightful, but never unrealistic or ill-defined. He did have a habit of swallowing his lines when I saw him on opening night, but he may improve as the run goes...
Friends, on the other hand, is simply about being a pleasant sitcom. The bland, it-is-what-it-is title, the innocuous theme song I'll Be There for You--everything about it screams that it would rather be liked than respected. Its comments about the outside world are kept to the background. (Literally. After 9/11 rocked New York City, the Magna Doodle board on Joey's apartment door had the initials "FDNY" written on it.) What do people talk about when they talk about Friends? Jennifer Aniston's hair. Jennifer Aniston's husband. The Ugly Naked Guy across...
...rebuttal to your statement about undeserved post-summer doldrums acclaim, I present to you Entertainment Weekly’s largely respectable critic Lisa Schwarzbaum and her take on last year’s rigid, bland-as-glue Seabiscuit: “A rare pedigreed entrant in a summer of mules.” It seems many critics (79 percent of them, according to rottentomatoes.com) are not as capable as you think of keeping their cool after a summer of roasted, bloated turkeys...
...combination of municipal power and rising real estate values succeeded in driving out the rot. In a new world of tall towers and chain stores, the Disney company played both beauty and the beast--corporate pioneer in the once skanky wilderness but also chief symbol of the bland mass marketplace that the Square is today. It's not just the squalid 42nd Street of the '70s that has been wiped away. It's the rich, wild tangle of the prewar years. Traub is of two minds about "the stupendous contrivance" that Times Square has become...
...still taking calls, as are clones like the USA Network's Nashville Star. But the plebiscite frenzy has gone far beyond these amateur-hour extravaganzas. You can hardly turn the dial without running into another opportunity to make your vote count, for something or other. --By Elizabeth L. Bland...