Word: formulaic
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...mystery here is why Author Tom Clancy abandoned the Popular Mechanics formula that served him so well in The Hunt for Red October (1984) and Red Storm Rising (1986): describe enough hardware and any plot can seem plausible. Clancy occasionally hits his old stride ("Pellets fired from a shotgun disperse radially at a rate of one inch per yard of linear travel"), but this time out he concentrates on his human characters, a subject apparently beyond the range of his research. Patriot Games is a minefield of unintended comedy. When, for instance, the Princess announces that she is two months...
What can be done to break this iron triangle of social isolation, black joblessness and single-parent families? Even 20 years after the ghettos of Detroit and Newark erupted into the fires of long-suppressed rage, Americans cling to the sanguine faith that some magic formula can end this cycle of poverty and social pathology. More money for social programs, a welfare system with stronger incentives to succeed, the teaching of values in the schools: these are the familiar answers of policymakers. But compared with the gravity of the problems of the black underclass, almost all the standard remedies amount...
...Songlines is a captivating journey into Australia, the past and the imagination. -- A formula falters in Patriot Games...
...designer regarded as couture's new superstar, Christian Lacroix, maintains that the "dream is the No. 1 fashion formula." Last February Lacroix, 36, abruptly quit as chief designer for the house of Jean Patou, and this summer he introduced his first private collection. And what a collection it is. Inspired by his native city of Arles in Provence and by his university studies in art history, it features such figures as a traditional Arlesienne in crisscrossed lace shawls and striped silk skirt and a French cowgirl to round up the horses for which the region is famous...
...hits and a fatal plane crash. How many films can be squeezed out of this formula? O.K., The Buddy Holly Story and Patsy Cline's Sweet Dreams were good movies. But . . . La Bamba? Ritchie Valens was only 17 when he, Holly and J.P. ("Big Bopper") Richardson died in 1959. His music is surely worth remembering; his life is hardly worth dramatizing. So Writer-Director Luis Valdez shapes facts into fable. Valens' family is a chicano caricature; death forever stalks our shooting star; chunky Ritchie is made over into winsome Lou Diamond Phillips. Even the music (by Los Lobos) sounds thin...