Word: effective
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Myers' appointment takes effect July 1, but hewill not begin teaching next year...
...media violence, the debate there is fast approaching the same point that discussions about the health impact of tobacco reached some time ago--it's over. Few researchers bother any longer to dispute that bloodshed on TV and in the movies has an effect on the kids who witness it. Added to the mix now are video games, at least the ones built around the model of hunt and kill. Captivated by effects that are ever more graphic, game boys learn to associate gusts of "blood" with the primal gratifications of scoring. In Golden Eye, a big seller, the player...
...most hospitable to fantasy--a zone of suspended disbelief wherein all things become possible, including deeds of graphic violence. It is sometimes said that too many television shows and movies are cynically targeted at 12-year-olds. That's not exactly the point: the makers of those shows in effect appropriate the imaginative world of the child because the youthful brain is the environment most frictionlessly sympathetic to fantasy, no questions asked. The tiresome, responsible brain of the adult breaks into the action and says, Now wait a minute...
...faint praise can tell by now, it is pretty dull. That may seem hard to believe, given the subject matter--space exploration!--but watching From the Earth to the Moon induces a state of cognitive dissonance. The acting is first-rate; the details look right; still, the overall effect is boredom...
...lack of any bad guys, the by-now familiar re-creation of Mission Control. Ultimately, though, From the Earth to the Moon suffers from a fundamental problem that its creators could do nothing about: the moon missions were a disappointment. They were thrilling while they took place, but that effect dissipated quickly in the 1970s, as NASA lost its way. Mankind's giant leap never seemed to take us beyond rocks and golf shots. Hanks may want to restore NASA's glory, but on the evidence so far, he hasn't succeeded. Like its subject, From the Earth...