Word: dourness
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...steel and concrete as metaphor - tied, on one shoreline, to a truce struck between the Saudi ruling family and religious traditionalists in the kingdom. The Sauds get virtually limitless wealth, a healthy chunk of which they share with their dour clerical partners and their Wahhabist accountants. In exchange, the royals receive a stamp of religious approval, as the true protectors of the Holy Sites of Mecca and Medina, as well as an understanding that 25,000 or so members of the royal family can do, more or less, anything they please, while the country's 27 million citizens live under...
...smoke anyway. With public smoking bans (covering bars, restaurants, and the like) spreading like weeds, suddenly the idea of leaving people free to choose a smoking or non-smoking establishment seems shockingly primitive. Under the pressure of non-smokers’ “rights,” dour paternalism, and shaky science, personal liberty—of property and body—has been eviscerated...
...Russian play imported to Japan, with its dark humor and dour humanity intact--indeed, italicized? That's what Akira Kurosawa managed in 1957 with his faithful film of Maxim Gorky's claustrophobic epic. The Criterion edition offers a bonus: Jean Renoir's '36 version, with Jean Gabin in the role of the charismatic thief played in the Kurosawa film by Toshiro Mifune. It's a chance to see two movie masters stamp their genius on a superb drama...
...ancestors in TV's Stone Age. Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts was a competition of little-known singers getting the fragrance of national publicity (Patsy Cline was a contestant who became a star after appearing there). And Arthur Murray's Dance Party showcased the terpsichoreal skills of the dour impresario, his wife Katherine and a host of graceful semi-pros. From the talents displayed way back then came not only American Idol and Dancing With the Stars but their movie siblings, High School Musical and Take the Lead...
...exactly a new kind of video for T.I., but it is a better one, glitzier and funnier than the clips for his previous hits “Rubber Band Man” and “Bring ‘Em Out.” Handheld cameras and dour-faced club jumpers have been replaced by white suits and rims that glint in the L.A. sunlight. As is appropriate for a video that is selling a movie, there’s a lot of interesting and un-explained stuff going on: T.I. plays an intense game of chess, a weightlifting...