Word: churlish
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sets and costumes effectively highlight the juxtaposition between Captain Shotover's loose, churlish demeanor and the aristocratic pretentiousness of the younger generation. Shotover's house looks like an old sea vessel; its rickety poop deck is fashioned as a veranda and netting drapes the furniture and bookcases. The lavish, flamboyant costumes are appropriately incongruous in Shotover's domestic environment...
...coincidences fall into place for the mission's chief planner (Robert Duvall, being excellent again), and how this entirely reasonable fellow begins to fall under the spell of lucky chance. He is in effect the audience's surrogate. Once all his questions have been answered, it seems churlish, indeed downright ungrateful, not to go along with him and the plot he is spinning...
...eyes, New York City is a ruin in which civility and beauty are relentlessly stamped out. "I suspected that the entire block," he notes, "chosen because it was handsome, had been condemned for demolition and cleared of tenants." Noting that automated garages are replacing the older type, thus putting "churlish" attendants out of work, Wren comments: "One more bit of the inhumane is replaced by the non-human." The author strikes this mordant note often enough to suggest a bitterness behind the punch lines. Berger rarely fails to make wretched excess seem hilarious, but he insists that equal emphasis...
...Katherine Graham, dowager empress of American journalism, taking a deal that was unattractive financially but which would leave him in charge of editorial operations. Meanwhile, unknown to Felker, Murdoch, friend number one, had approached friend number two Burden with an offer of $7 a share. And Burden was churlish; he didn't want to sell his magazines to the dowager empress. He took his skis and went off to Aspen to think about it, and the deadline to sell to the Post came and went...
George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, was serenely explaining why he was opposed to recombinant DNA research. Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci was churlish, peeved that his proposal to extend the research ban another 90 days had failed, although a compromise measure--a 30 day ban--was agreed upon. The only person with a real reason to be pleased with himself at the special Cambridge City Council meeting Wednesday night was Daniel J. Hayes...