Word: formulaic
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...competitive in the labor market, a thriving economy that could provide a job for everyone who wants to work, and more access to capital markets for minorities who want to < start their own businesses. Meeting those tasks is more difficult than parceling out opportunities according to a racial formula, but in the long run more worthwhile...
Alas, a career full of lost skirmishes with the moguls proved that even Welles couldn't shake Hollywood free of its romantic realism. It held then; it holds today. Except that now the old glamour has atrophied into formula: boy's adventures and ghost stories and lady-in-distress thrillers. When was the last time a Hollywood picture moved anyone to exclaim, "Well, I've never seen that before!"? Perhaps surprise is not on the menu of today's moviegoers. They want reassurance, domestic fairy tales come true, not the astonishment that Jean Cocteau demanded...
...there a duller or more formula-ridden artist in America than Salle in 1991, as he approaches the Big Four-Oh? His work, essentially, is a decoction from three other artists. From Robert Rauschenberg's combines of the '50s and his silk-screen "collages" of the early '60s, Salle learned about piling unrelated images onto a canvas, the difference being that Salle hasn't a trace of the lyrical sharpness and poetic force of vintage Rauschenberg. His tone is a supercilious droning, very far from Rauschenberg's enthused, life-enhancing Barbaric Yawp...
B.C.C.I.'s modus operandi for gaining political influence was as simple as its banking methods were convoluted. The formula: money. Abedi found his opening wedge in the U.S. in late 1976, when he looked to Georgia, home of then President-elect Carter, and the rotund personage of Carter confidant Bert Lance. In deep financial trouble with his National Bank of Georgia and beset by regulators for past banking indiscretions, Lance was all too glad to be put on B.C.C.I.'s payroll as a $100,000-a-year consultant. Abedi declared Lance was his "unofficial ambassador . . . brought in to give...
...role that he is hard not to like. Moreover, his presence has helped turn Family Matters into Miller-Boyett's most watchable comedy. His constant grating presence -- the eager beaver who sets everybody's teeth on edge -- has added a dash of vinegar to the cotton-candy formula. Maybe every TV family needs a nerd in the neighborhood...