Word: drabs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Game) in Kennedy's Albany trilogy, with its wry poetic naturalism. The bums in Ironweed were not noble, but they had their own gravelly, poignant voices. The family Francis left behind was ordinary as linoleum, but their emptiness left a sympathetic ache in the reader's gut. Francis was drab and cramped on the outside, that husk of a booze-wracked body, but he didn't live there. He came to life inside, with way too many other people -- the loves, enemies and chances he had lost -- in the decaying mansion of his memories. What a lovely movie might dwell...
Come again? World War II Army generals would flip in their graves if they could see what has become of the trusty little truck commissioned for $740 apiece in 1941. Who could have foreseen that the military's drab workhorse, the general purpose vehicle -- jeep, for short -- would be reborn 40 years later in electric colors as Cherokees, Broncos, Renegades, Blazers and Samurais and used to cart fashion victims and C.P.A.s up the ramps of suburban parking structures...
...apparently made some mighty miscalculations of its own. Analysts say its fall colors, weighted heavily toward gray, beige and olive, were too drab for many shoppers. The chain's staples -- roomy buffalo-plaid flannel shirts, ten-button Tees and jeans -- did not offer buyers anything fresh. Even Banana Republic's safari look was running out of steam. Meanwhile, copycat stores seemed to be appearing on every corner...
...stash books, papers, computers and answering machines. Baked ceramic tile is in vogue for every surface from countertops to foyer floors, and the mixing of bleached and raw-wood textures is common. Formica furniture, in startling shapes and bold solids, is a yuppie favorite. As for colors, earth tones -- drab tans, harvest golds and avocados -- are now out of favor. Yolk yellow and soft pastels are comers, and classic Wedgwood and Williamsburg blue are being revved up to purples and periwinkles. From California to Connecticut, country French decor is most popular...
...haste mark these encounters. Monosyllabically written by Andrea Dunbar, directed with documentary flatness by Alan Clarke, this movie achieves a cinematic rarity: a perfect lack of grace. And thus a perfect match of style and subject. If we believed these figures were capable of rising above themselves and their drab surroundings, we would probably be appalled by their rutting ways. As it is, we see that the consummation toward which they rudely slouch, a menage a trois, represents undreamed-of fulfillment. Been down so long it looks like up to them...