Word: condescending
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...fist-faced women watches TV with the sound off, another goes to work for the circus in Sarasota, a third injures her knee in a fall from her father's horse. Capote's intuition slices through the lies, doubts and fears of these people but he refuses to condescend. He is perplexed by the townspeople who noisily support Quinn against all suspicion. And he is wounded by the quiet pain of Pepper's lover Addie, who nobly accepts her fate when a handcarved coffin arrives in the mail...
...require. You would hope for a great deal more from his best movies--the best, even, of this limited, specialized kind--than Carpenter may be capable of, but Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13 are such neat packages of self-acknowledged hokum that it is difficult to resent or condescend to them. Compared to the slackness and swaggering middlebrow pretension of recent thrillers like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Last wave, they are remarkable for their stringent suspensefulness, their fundamental lack of conceit, the inventiveness of numerous details and situations, and a sharp, reverberant visceral twang...
Joseph Mitchell, whom he calls "the best writer at the New Yorker," Mitchell, he says, can write about people without seeming to examine them or condescend to them. "The sentences seem to have appeared there on magic slates--the whole process looks effortless...
...Concepts," has laid on a score that is only supposed to give the impression of rock 'n' roll. Instead, it will probably put off her fans and cause undue mirth among audience members who know the difference between Paul Williams and Phil Spector. If Streisand and Peters condescend to the music, they graciously allow rock audiences the chance to cheer for true genius. A concert sequence, where the debuting Barbra brings a hostile rocker audience to their feet with the wonder of her funkiness, is a milestone of piquant absurdity, equivalent, perhaps, to having Kate Smith conquer Woodstock...
Television's neutrality is a little less than it seems. As Paul H. Weaver points out, television tends to condescend to politicians. This may be because "neutrality" permits a commentator a great many negative remarks about politicians hungry for office, aiming their speeches at some bloc, making a poor showing or taking desperate measures. But neutrality bars a commentator from saying bluntly "That was a brilliant speech," "I agree with him," or "He acted courageously...