Word: formulaic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...impulse before it becomes a trend, and fearless as well as funny in his ability to meld styles to his whim and will. "This new collection of mine is the Thousand and One Nights," he explains, adding, "I've mixed the 18th century and the Ottomans." A perfect formula, it turns out, for clothes to be worn with both a slink and a smile...
Throughout his talk and the reception that followed, Avildsen stressed the practical and financial side of film-making. The Oscar for Rocky was nice, but better than that, "it afforded me four flops." The films he made after Rocky--Slow Dancing in the Big City (1978), The Formula (1980), Neighbors (1981) and A Night in Heaven(1983)-- were trademark Avildsen: competent, unthreatening, inexpensive. Like the director's first hit, 1970s hippie-bashing Joe, each was in tune with its time, picking up on common wisdom and simply laying...
Just a few decades ago, the whodunit formula demanded by both publishers and readers was compact -- and cozy: 180 pages of pure deduction and cardboard characters propped up in a long-gone rural England. Along with a handful of other contemporary crime writers including Dick Francis and Ruth Rendell, P.D. James, 66, has gracefully shattered the rules. In her best and most ambitious tale to date, A Taste for Death -- her ninth mystery novel in 24 years -- James has become a kind of Le Carre of crime, blending the calmer depths of mainstream fiction with the white rapids...
...treaty. They fear that if the Americans move SDI beyond the limits of the treaty, the U.S. would have a strategic advantage that would give us a first- strike capability. This is not, however, the President's intention. So we ought to be able to find some formula that would permit us to probe the technological potential of SDI while at the same time removing the Soviet fears that we are moving toward first- strike capability...
Cambridge became one of the first municipalities to adopt rent control in 1970, when inflation and rising property values led tenants' groups to lobby for the policy. The City Rent Control Board sets rents for 17,000 Cambridge housing units, using a formula that accounts for operating expenses and what it considers a reasonable profit for the landlord...