Word: epically
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...religious movie epic-along with the "religiose" pop tune and the Biblical bestseller-is more than ever a part of the U.S. scene. Clergymen have mixed feelings about it. Some see it as a heartening sign of a religious revival, believe that movies can make the stories and sometimes even the spirit of the Bible come alive for otherwise indifferent millions. Other churchmen are appalled to find Scripture reduced to sex and circuses, to see spiritual messages clothed in the well-publicized flesh of Hollywood stars, regard the whole trend as part of a vulgarization of religion. This week...
...picture also has aims beyond taking a scalpel to the more peculiar states of Lone Star mentality. It is evidently intended to be something of an American epic, running, as it does, for well over three hours and covering a quarter century in the life of the ranch- owning Benedict clan. On the surface, these people would seem to make admirabe characters for a modern epic because they live on a large scale. Their "ranch," a domain of 596,000 acres, is the setting of some huge social affairs--mostly weddings and funerals--and a number of magnificent fights...
...that the people aren't really big; their motives often appear selfish or spiteful or stupid. The disparity between the characters' grand surroundings and their petty actions is, of course, one of the main points of the film, and it requires that these people be cut down from epic size by constant acid scrutiny. But it doesn't take three hours and any number of lavish sets to advance such a relatively simple argument--Stevens, as a matter of fact, clinches the point in one short scene which shows the group of ill-bred oil millionaires milling about...
Prokofiev: Love for Three Oranges (members of the Slovenian National Opera conducted by Bogo Leskovich; Epic, 2 LPs). The fairy-tale opera whose failure when first produced by the Chicago Opera Association in 1921-22 caused Prokofiev to leave the U.S. in dismay and disgust. (Twenty-seven years later it was a big success at the New York City Opera.) This recording is in Russian, but the performance is high-spirited and technically brilliant...
...mood, in movement, Giant is something the film colony often claims but seldom achieves: an epic. And this epic was achieved by an act of singular artistic courage. At the serious risk of losing the customer's interest-and with it the $5,000.000 production cost of the picture -Director Stevens slowed the pace of his story down to a deep-Texas drawl. With a more than Homeric lentor. almost as though it were inching along in one of those venerable jalopies that still wheeze across the hot pink flats between El Paso and San Antonio, the camera moves...