Word: dourness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...accounts, Paris is a city happily reconciled with death: its cemeteries, from Montparnasse to Montmartre and Père-Lachaise, aren't dour sites of mourning and mortality so much as elegiac pleasure grounds. They memorialize the city's famed, infamous and all but forgotten in parklike environments studded with tombs so exquisitely imaginative that they resemble works of art. There's a certain macabre logic, then, to Le 104 (or the Centquatre), an ambitious multidisciplinary arts center that was once a state-run pompes funèbres - a municipal funeral hub from which hearses, coffins and corpses were dispatched...
...Jumping from one crisis to another, Kristina may prove not only too epic but too episodic - and far too dour - for a Broadway audience. The age of the serious musicals, your Les Miz and Phantom of the Opera, ended abruptly when The Producers and Mamma Mia! showed that theatergoers preferred perky, gaudy, old-fashioned musical comedies. But Kristina should find a constituency among those who love hearing wonderful music sung by gifted voices. If any naughty folks last night recorded the show, they should immediately post some of its instant classics: Robert's devastating solo "Gold Can Turn to Sand...
...hastily arranged news conference on Thursday afternoon, Merkel, an often serious, even dour leader, was overjoyed when she broke the news. "I am exceptionally happy about this decision, which is along the lines of what the government wanted," she said. "It's clear the patience and determination of the government paid...
Kids won't be the only miserable people during these waning days of summer, when the first day of school lurks like a dour detention officer. The retailers selling students back-to-school clothing, supplies and gadgets will be pretty sad souls too. According the National Retail Federation, the average family with K-12 students will spend $548.72 on school merchandise, a 7.7% decline from 2008. Britt Beemer, founder and chairman of America's Research Group, a retail consulting firm, predicts spending will drop from 8.5% to 12.5% this year, compared with a 5% fall last year...
...Wizard of Oz. Melody is Dorothy, Boris is the fulminating old wizard, and Oz--well, that has to be Manhattan: Gotham as the Emerald City, full of endearing creatures who make dreams come true. The town has a magical effect on its visitors. Melody picks up some of Boris' dour rhetoric, except that for cretins she says "croutons." Her parents, having followed her trail north, get the feeling too. Her staid father (Ed Begley Jr.) unbuttons his sexual inhibitions, and her Blanche DuBois--like mom (a stingingly funny Patricia Clarkson) becomes a noted photographer and full-time free spirit...