Word: drabs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...flash flame, he had segued from being Elvis to doing Elvis, playing him on TV and in movies. By the '60s, he was his own parody, stunt double, postage stamp--the first Elvis impersonator. In the new era of the singer-songwriter, hack tunesmiths were still handing him drab variations on Don't Be Cruel. The Beatles left him for dead; and his darling, deviant version of Blowin' in the Wind (from a Graceland basement tape) shows he didn't quite get Dylan. Elvis was Vegas before he played Vegas--the ultimate lounge act. His movie and music producers...
...pretty people realizing outrageous dreams. Our directors know how to fulfill Alfred Hitchcock's aim: to make the Japanese audience scream at the same time as the American audience. Perhaps they know it too well. A manic roteness now envelops action films; the need to thrill has become a drab addiction. Isn't there more to moviemaking than having your finger on the pulse of the world public? Can't the megalo-melodrama be infused with passion and ingenuity? The answer so far, and with just one exception, is no--not this season. For this is the Summer of Dumb...
Onto Ivies, then, and a drab, rain-swept effort that saw us finish fifth, with Luis struggling to get on top of his game and nobody breaking 160 in a rain-shortened event. But thereafter things turned for the better...
...something dark lingers throughout the performance. Perhaps Prokofiev's score, which haunts even the most romantic moments at the flick of a violin bow, is partially to blame. Perhaps it's the costumes, dark navy uniform gowns for the ladies and drab tuxedoes for the men in the eerily-lit ballroom scene, also add to the mood. Perhaps the unexplained variations in the story-line, which Corder himself hopes create "a feeling of mystery and magic," cause a slightly unsettling feeling instead. Whatever the reason, Cinderella remains a delightful, if somewhat dark, performance piece...
...unsure of his own identity and compelled to wear disguises as if he were shopping for a new soul. Similarly, Noyce eschews the campy look of Bond or Batman. The movie, about a post-Soviet plutocrat (Rade Serbedzija) who tries to mastermind a new Russian revolution, is dark--almost drab--and broody. It seems deeply riven between its impulse to entertain and its aspirations to update both Freud and Le Carre...