Word: dicta
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Holy Grail worked largely because they blithely ignored traditional dicta of screenwriting and approached the movie as a two-hour set of manageable episodes. Life Of Brian does a more creditable job as a "full length feature presentation," as the studios call it, but its sanity actually works against it. The risks Monty Python used to take with its narrative line--bouncing characters from film to animation, for example--would fail as often as they succeeded, but they were a trademark, often responsible for the funniest moments...
...scope of the decision. The confusion arises from some broad language in the majority opinion, written by Justice Potter Stewart and signed by four other Justices, including Burger. It flatly states that members of the public have no constitutional right to attend criminal trials. Technically that language is dicta-comments that are not binding precedent. But after a time, the precise limits on a high court decision have a way of getting obscured, especially if lower court judges or indeed high court Justices seize on sweeping statements in the majority opinion...
...needs of CBS, Philip Morris, David Sarnoff, Lever Brothers, Samuel Goldwyn, Pan Am, Squibb, Pepperidge Farm and others too numerous to count. A prodigios host and incessant partygiver, he was Manhattan's equivalent of the "talking chief on other, Polynesian islands-the chamberlain who enunciates the real chiefs dicta to the tribe, or, as he put it himself, "I supply the Listerine to the commercial dandruff on the shoulders of corporations." As an American success story, Sonnenberg's was cast in the old epic mold...
...raged above St. Peter's Basilica in Rome on July 18, 1870, the bishops of the First Vatican Council adopted a decree that would alter Christian history. A Pope, they declared, is infallible when he defines doctrines of faith or morals ex cathedra (from his throne) and such dicta are "irreformable" and require no "consent of the church." The bishops' lopsided 533-to-2 vote that day masked a deep division in the council and throughout the church. The immediate repercussions included the schism of "Old Catholics" and a wave of antichurch laws in Germany. Though scholars differ...
...other city, Boren would be little more than a lovable prankster. But his continuing spoof of bureaucratic outrages has hit the mark so well that he has gained semi-status by using one of his own dicta: "If you can't beat them, don't just join them, lead them...