Word: formulaic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...paintings of Marden, 36, are almost too simple: they are groups of canvases butted together in diptychs or triptychs, each surface painted one uniform color-usually a drab, dense gray. It seems an inert formula but it is not, largely because of what Marden learned from Jasper Johns-how to spread a skin of oil and wax over the surface of a canvas with such subtlety that, though monochrome, it is full of half-suppressed or latent incidents. The paintings do become objects of contemplation, like landscapes; but their austerity is so low-keyed as to risk blandness...
...does in 1974, it seems contrived and consciously old-fashioned, an imitation of earlier Stones successes that were in turn imitations of Chuck Berry. It's as though Jagger and Richard, at a loss for really new ideas, have trotted out their favorite twenty-year-old dance beat formula. Amazingly, to some extent, the formula still works; it is hard to avoid dancing to the damned thing, which only proves that a little bit of Chuck Berry goes a long fucking way. Nonetheless, a slightly stale air hangs about it, as about most of the album...
Since Airport 1975 is a sequel to Airport, with its patented formula-panic in the skies, dither on the ground-it is reasonable to assume that the passengers on this Columbia Airlines 747 are going to find themselves in grave peril...
...hear it for the Lord's Prayer," he once intoned after Sergio Franchi sang that hymn. A shrewd judge of talent, Sullivan introduced 25,000 performers to American TV, many, such as Bob Hope, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and Liza Minnelli, for the first time. His formula was simple: "Open big, have a good comedy act, put in something for children and keep the show clean...
...painstaking formula has also helped me arrive at the results of the other contests today...