Word: formulas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...modern Merlin, conjuring up astonishing new notions of space and time, changing forever man's perception of his universe ?and of himself. He fathered relativity and heralded the atomic age with his famed formula E=mc2. Yet his formidable reputation never undermined his simple humanity. He spoke out courageously against social injustice. In his later years, dressed in baggy clothes, his white hair as unkempt as a sheep dog's, he helped yourgsters with their geometry homework, still loved to sail, play Mozart melodies on the violin and scribble reams of doggerel. Though he has been dead nearly...
...Rapids family life and California street life confront one another on the screen. His device is too simple, and the extreme images have no force. The director's lack of involvement with the film lowers it to the level of a porn film. Schrader uses a classic box-office formula--a little sex and scandal combined with middle-class moral outrage--to make a cheap show with a tantalizing title that offends no one because it goes nowhere. For his next trick, Schrader has signed John Travolta to play in American Gigolo...
Crichton departs from the formula in only one respect: whenever possible, he forces gratuitous cruelty between cliches. Dogs chew rats. A prisoner escaping from Newgate slices up his hands climbing the fence. Connery later strangles this poor innocent in cold blood. The funniest gag in the movie involves a decomposing cat. Nothing new for this butcher. In Crichton's Westworld, the most satisfying fantasies are also the bloodiest--robots blown to bits; one remembers brains being sliced up, organs flung about, dead bodies on dissection tables in Coma; now, Crichton gets his kicks injecting sadism into kiddie-movies. Bleah...
...line's scoring punch is the final element in a carefully considered formula for success. When the N.H.L. mushroomed from six to 18 teams a decade ago, most new franchises tried to trade for instant respectability, lavishing huge contracts on fading veterans. But Islander General Manager William Torrey concluded that the future lay in the future: "You can't build a championship club out of someone else's rejects." So the Islanders searched the amateur ranks for talented youngsters and set them to playing cautious, defense-minded hockey until they matured. Says Torrey: "We had to play...
Anticipating further stoppages, the Prime Minister last week devised a formula that would grant the lower paid manual workers an increase of about 8.5%, even though the raise exceeded his guideline. But it seemed doubtful that the workers would accept the offer. Unless there was an unexpected cooling of Britain's latest bout of union fever, Callaghan's government could be doomed to the same fate that befell the Conservative government of Edward Heath in 1974. Because Heath was unable to settle a strike by the militant mineworkers' union, his party lost its majority in a general...