Word: deftly
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Codi does have her preachy side, not that it seems to bother Loyd. After she lectures him, he agrees to get rid of his birds and give up cockfighting. There is enough fun in this novel, though, to balance its rather hectoring tone. Codi has a deft way of observing her small, remote hometown, caught uneasily between past and future. When Halloween arrives, she notes, "Grace was at an interesting sociological moment: the teenagers inhaled MTV and all wanted to look like convicted felons, but at the same time, nobody here was worried yet about razor blades in apples...
...TALL GUY. Jeff Goldblum is a lanky second banana to an overbearing comedian (Rowan Atkinson); Emma Thompson is the woman who slips on the peel of the tall guy's goofy allure. Keep your expectations low, and enjoy this deft British trifle...
Classic British mysteries generally fit into one of three categories: the puzzle, or whodunit; the psychological study, or whydunit; and the comic jape. Robert Barnard and Reginald Hill have each written deft examples of all three. In their newest and most ambitious works, they adroitly fuse the subgenres together to paint rich, if characteristically jaundiced, social panoramas of decaying industrial towns. Both offer the teasing pleasures of suspense, sly misdirection and a breakneck climax as police seek to avert bloody murder. $ Both feature a gallery of vivid characters. And both take on themes ostensibly belonging to serious literature...
...understands how the experiment sprung into Nelson's head in the first place, or how he stumbled upon the specifics in his formula for death. But this is certainly an ambitious and lengthy film, and necessarily starts in media res. And Flatliners more than compensates for its faults. The deft directorial manipulation of largely unsympathetic characters, and the fine, full characterizations by the actors so involves the audience that it cannot maintain critical distance...
...this reclusive 44-year-old San Jose State University history professor receiving so much attention? His boosters say it is because Steele's deft prose has invigorated a stale debate. "There is a freshness to his writing," says producer Thomas Lennon, who persuaded Steele to do the PBS special Seven Days in Bensonhurst after reading one of his essays in Harper's. "By making himself his own laboratory, he cuts at familiar issues in a very unfamiliar way." Says author Stanley Crouch, like Steele a critic of affirmative action: "One of the most important things he is doing is questioning...