Word: descent
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Hollywood directorial debut of Harold Prince, this disastrous film represents a vertiginous descent from bravos to catcalls. Earlier this year, Director-Producer Prince won just acclaim for his scintillating musical, Company. Guessing at the aesthetic motivations behind Something for Everyone is a speculative pastime, but ever since his success with the musical, Cabaret, Prince has apparently been captivated by the notion that he is peculiarly endowed to interpret the nature of European decadence and its relationship to the rise of Nazi Germany. The same theme recently caused a bit more flesh to crawl in The Damned, possibly because the decadence...
...hearts. From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life, for in the secret hour of life's midday the parabola is reversed, death is born. We grant goal and purpose to the ascent of life, why not to the descent?" Erik Erikson agrees: "Any span of the cycle lived without vigorous meaning, at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end, endangers the sense of life and the meaning of death in all whose life stages are intertwined...
...worst hazard is the acronym's tendency to create doubles. As soon as an acronym becomes common, it breeds a litter of identical children. When a man says that he works for AID, is he part of the Agency for International Development or Americans of Italian Descent? Perhaps he is a doctor concerned with Artificial Insemination by Donor, or a lexicographer employed by the Acronyms and Initialisms Dictionary, which now lists 18 different AIDs...
...DESCENT to Hell, Virgil tells us, is easy. It's getting back out that's a problem. Once the first half of this concert had plunged itself into the lower depths, nothing could lure it back. As the gastroenterologists settled back into their seats, and the balcony dwellers returned from the bar, a sudden portent of doom came over me. A portent, as it turns out, eminently justified...
...begins with a tableau modeled on the Descent of the Cross. The arms are lifeless, the knees bent, the head (hair artfully mussed) is low, and the whole corpse itself is bathed in perspiration. The first step down from the podium just fails to conceal a totter, but in spite of that the miracle worker somehow manages to reappear forty-six times...