Word: finest
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...West flipped two high-explosive satires (Miss Lonelyhearts, The Day of the Locust) at Middle America. Hardly anybody noticed. His four novels, which took 14 years to write (1924-1938), earned him exactly $1,280 in royalties. Twenty years after his shocking death he was recognized as the finest and blackest American humorist since Mark Twain went to his bitter end. Now, a young California English professor has at last accorded West his first full-length biography. Awed by his subject's brilliance and self-sealing reserve, Martin is too chary with his insights and interpretations. But he offers...
...good short story captures a brief glimpse of the human condition, turns on a fleeting moment of confrontation or revelation; a movie derived from such a microcosm is usually afflicted with a bad case of inflation. Take The Swimmer, John Cheever's mythic pool odyssey. One of the finest short stories in a generation, it was magnified into one of the worst movies...
...Blake moves in the best circles, and many of the men who bear Anthony to the grave-site are almost-rich, in the way that America alone can produce the almost-rich. These men are the vice-presidents and the branch managers, the second-level executives who buy the finest Hart. Schafner and Marx suits off the rack. Good men, men with consciences and children and wives who could step into a role in a situation comedy in a minute. It is a beautifully-staged funeral, the kind Anthony would have been proud to have...
...finest of the opera films achieve theatrical effect by cinematic means. The Berlin Deutsche Oper's version of Hans Werner Henze's sardonic The Young Lord, for example, hits harder than would be possible in a stage production: In this grim fable, the citizens of a small town foolishly ape the eccentricities of what they believe to be a wealthy aristocrat; at the end they discover that the object of their idolatry is in fact a real ape. Stripped of pretense by the cruel joke, the people stare helplessly at the ape while the camera mercilessly moves from...
...main problem is the lack of a permanent home. Although universally recognized as one of the two finest classical dance companies in the U.S.-the other being the State Theater's resident New York City Ballet-the company has always had difficulty finding an auditorium to serve as home base. When and if the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington is completed (possibly by the end of 1971), ABT is due to become its resident dance ensemble. The designation, however, may be a token one. Already strapped for funds, the Center's sponsors...