Word: causticity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...willing to get rid of him is never entirely clear.) In adolescence, Guanglin makes it to college in Beijing, but through no help of his original family members, to whom he returns when his adoptive father kills himself. Things only get worse, and the lachrymose novel quickly becomes a caustic indictment of Confucian familial ideals, an exposé of the "deadness of family life," and, by extension, the ills of a charred, paternalistic nation. Guanglin's nonlinear narration may be detached and muddled at times, but his - and Yu's - unvarnished vision of China is a welcome antidote...
...Pilbeam’s decision had to do not with the substance of the decision but the unilateral, sudden, and boorish manner in which it was made. Pilbeam’s refusal to communicate openly with students and UC representatives is not only alarming but also paradigmatic of a caustic and imperious attitude towards students that has recently come to grip University Hall.Though the UC and University Hall had been in dialogue since last term regarding the party grants, the saga began in earnest over the summer. In July and August, the deans in University Hall contacted the UC leadership...
...Grub's an abrasive civilian and a violent player, the type who shows a teammate how to grab a rival and deliver "20 straight rights" to his head. Grub isn't coping with a changing game and looming retirement, and his crumbling sense of identity draws him into increasingly caustic clashes with deceitful club CEO "Colgate" Perry (John Jarratt) and Grub's stoical wife Emma, played superbly by Raelee Hill...
...rain-battered August day in Edinburgh, and inside the city's Usher Hall the conductor Gustavo Dudamel is having difficulty with the strings. It is the final rehearsal of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, and Dudamel wants the violins to be more biting and caustic. Any successful performance of Shostakovich's 10th must reflect its historical context: Stalin's purges; some 20 million dead; a composer who lived in constant fear of the knock on the door. "Muchachos," Dudamel says, searching for the right expression. "Pop pop pop!" he says, mimicking the sound of a firing squad...
...surge of Mexican cinema; they usually cite the three amigos: Alfonso Cuaron, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Guillermo Del Toro. Yet Reygadas, 36, has made the biggest noise at international film festivals and among the more intellectual critics. His Japon and Battle in Heaven won praise for their filmmaking rigor, caustic view of Mexico's social ills and often frank take on sex. With his competition film Stellet Licht (Silent Light), Reygadas shocks again: this drama of a Mennonite community in northern Mexico contains no explicit hanky-panky. In its way the film is true to the severe, austere code...