Word: garishly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...modernization, and they have tried to use their staggering and sudden wealth to buy the machines of progress without the devils that often inhabit them. Conservative Saudi leaders, for example, a pursue a selective strategy regarding the technological riches of the West: they seek to modernize without the garish libertine free-for-all that Western secular individualism has promoted...
...featuring "Blog," a rare nectar imported to Holiday Inns and Sheratons across Nielsen-land by the viciously mercantilistic spice barons of Aldebaron IV. And whenever the fans met (for ten solar cycles), they gathered on weekends in huddled masses in dimly-lit hotel corridors. partying, discussing, earnestly analyzing, wearing garish buttons and proclaiming their bizarre beliefs before wearied maids, bellhops and addled television producers. And later they went home and cranked out massive tomes on "The Societal Implications of the Vulcan Ethic." Nightly, or biweekly, or weekly, they sat in front of their tubes staring transfixed at the images...
Lenka Peterson (Henny) succeeds in seeming 83 years old, which, under the garish light of a hospital room, is a feat. She's a forceful character, who makes her son's childlike infatuation with her fairly credible. Henny falters where the script does. She's got too many lines and knows it, so she gropes for a way to enrich her persona. The result is a character who's too self-consciously spunky, reminiscent, at times, of Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies. And when it comes time for that last dramatic soliloquoy, her part collapses altogether...
Rather than pretend that this material makes any naturalistic sense, Director Mark Rydell (Cinderella Liberty) shrewdly goes for broke. The Rose has the same visual excess and garish romanticism as the oldtime Technicolor backstage sagas. When Rose gets into a yelling match with her manager (a somewhat forlorn Alan Bates) or plays in bed with her pickup of a lover (a frisky, sexy Frederic Forrest), the closeups are steamy and relentless. When Rose lands by helicopter at her nighttime stadium concerts, it looks like the arrival of the mother ship in Close Encounters (both films were shot by Vilmos Zsigmond...
...elaborate ruse to fool their child into thinking that their dead marriage is a happy one. Ross not only characterizes Jamie's father (Terry Kiser) as a desperately hip playboy, she must also give him a bachelor pad so overdone that even Hugh Hefner would find it garish. Jamie's mom (Roberta Maxwell), meanwhile, is required to go into a burlesque rage at the mere mention of her ex-husband's name. Ross shows far more respect for the kids, who are so truthfully drawn that they seem to have wandered in from another movie. Still, credible...