Word: divan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Behind the patrician style is a demanding boss. "He holds everybody accountable, and you damn sure better have the right answers," says former Aide David Divan. Webster, who insists on making every important decision and many minor ones himself, is notoriously slow to make up his mind. Yet he has proved receptive to creative, and politically risky, ideas. He introduced an ( effective counterterrorism program at the FBI; in recent years agents have successfully infiltrated several terrorist groups. He does not reject outright the notion of capturing wanted criminals and terrorists overseas and bringing them to the U.S. to stand trial...
...Bertrand Tavernier (The Clockmaker, Coup de Torchon). Monsieur wakes, engages in a mild battle of wills with his sere housekeeper, dresses for the arrival of his son Gonzague (Michel Aumont). Gonzague's stern wife (Genevieve Mnich) lectures Monsieur fondly on his latest painting-"Put a cat on the divan; a cat is always nice"-and Monsieur replies with a smile that might be a wince. His two grandsons make an ordinary nuisance of themselves. His granddaughter, the lovely Mireille (Katia Wostrikoff), watches today's dinner spin on its fireplace rotisserie and gets caught up a tree. Suddenly, like...
...reality of life in the Islamic world was more fanciful than its images in 19th century art, there could be no doubt that the popular pictures of the day exuded a fictive sensuality: the odalisque, her breasts exposed, her belly barely covered by harem trousers, lounging on a divan as she awaited a pasha's pleasure; swarthy eunuchs, armed with saber and musket, standing guard at the seraglio gates; the almah, or Egyptian dancing girl, clapping her castanets as she strips off her veils; the nubile concubine displaying her roseate flesh in a Turkish bath...
...carefully, and if they belong to a spacious mansion located on isolated and foggy cliffs, if the house is filled with unexpected and not altogether reputable guests, if, in particular, a wandering lunatic has just dropped in for tea, you will undoubtedly find a dead body lying behind the divan or under the sideboard. The laws of the country house weekend require it. The cast of wonderfully suspicious characters who have gathered in the neighborhood--the long-lost cousins and tormented heiresses--would feel cheated without one, the butler would probably lose...
...nothing, a personality-less cipher whose every action either fulfills the most hollow expectations of societal conduct or moves inertially towards a well-fed rest. Unable to choose, he mechanically makes love to both the mayor's wife and daughter--two primped peacocks immobile on a divan--until, deciding in a characteristically inverted way that the daughter is "very un-ugly," he asks for her hand. His ecstatic dream of wolfing down a juicy salt-cod hangs suspended over his scenes in the form of a giant fish impaled on a fork; the puzzling monster pineapple that wanders back...