Word: deft
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...they heighten the drama. When God creates light, an actor lights a cigarette; for a fatal storm at sea, a bare-chested thug tosses a bucket of water at the captain and wrestles him into submission in the water. Some stories are enacted, others narrated; still others are a deft mix of the two. A few good-natured modernisms are sprinkled in, but they never interfere with the seriousness and earnest romanticism of these tales of love and loss...
Whether you want to call it a trilogy, “two sequels and an epilogue” or two brilliant brothers and a bastard child, The Godfather trilogy’s cultural import cannot be overstated. With Nino Rota’s haunting score, Coppola’s deft storytelling, Gordon Willis’ exquisite cinematography and any number of superlative cast performances, the first two films are as close to pitch-perfect filmmaking as any ensemble has ever attempted. However, woe betide the one who actually decides to play the DVD to Part...
...determine his heft. "He's got to say, 'This is what the President wants,' with a cold steely eye, which Tom Ridge is good at," says Senator Pat Roberts, a G.O.P. member of the Intelligence Committee. But the bureaucracy has seen coordinators come and go, and it's very deft at staring them down...
...tough, vulnerable, coy and sultry. And in an era of invulnerable action fembots, she plays her fight scenes with real, human fear (that is, she actually acts). Meanwhile Abrams not only pulls off the intense action but writes dialogue and characters as endearing as Felicity's. In a deft early moment, Sydney's doomed boyfriend proposes to her by dropping to his knees on the college quad and belting out Build Me Up Buttercup horribly at the top of his lungs. Alias is like that. Ridiculous, over the top but unashamed, it manages to thrill and win our hearts...
...character assessments are deft and perceptive. He points out how the elder Bush—shaped by the Great Depression and World War II in his youth—was reluctant to take credit for the foreign policy achievements of his first term, and how Albert Gore ’69 came across during the 2000 presidential campaign as awkward, stiff and even self-defeating. Halberstam writes, “To those who had studied both Clinton and Gore, the outgoing president was clearly the more skilled politician, his loyalty always calibrated to the needs of the moment, his allegiances...