Word: genteel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...plot has the simplicity of a short short story. A Southern mother (Maureen Stapleton) long since deserted by her husband, and subsisting on delusions of genteel grandeur, wants to secure a suitable suitor for her slightly crippled daughter (Piper Laurie) who has withdrawn into the reverie world of her collection of tiny glass animals. The restive son of the house (George Grizzard) brings home a "gentleman caller" (Pat Hingle) who arouses the girl's interest and then, guiltlessly, inadvertently, breaks her pet unicorn and -by revealing that he is already engaged-her heart...
...genteel and proper for students to make these decisions by trying and failing and trying and sometimes succeeding, but that is the way most of us have to make them. To impose on our attempts the barriers of parietal hours designed for antiquated social institutions is barbarous. Why must the rules be a "couple of decades" behind...
...collection of bulbous-nosed, ham-handed hillbillies makes monkeys out of assorted stuffed shirts-judges, politicians, business tycoons-who are unlucky enough to stumble upon the idyllic world of Dogpatch. The grandmummy of soap-opera strips, Mary Worth, who evolved from a seedy apple seller to today's genteel gadabout, has spawned innumerable imitators: Brenda Starr (girl reporter), Dondi (boy orphan), On Stage (actress), Apartment 3-G (career girls). Along with soap, Rex Morgan, M.D. dispenses medical advice on everything from leprosy to euthanasia...
...beginning, Cassidy is a simple revolutionary, spitting at the carriage trade while he digs ditches to support his mother (Flora Robson) and sister (Sian Phillips), both doomed to die in genteel poverty. The teakettle warmth of Irish family life simmers comfortably until Director Jack Cardiff plunges into the eye of street fights during the Transport Strike and the bloody Easter Rising of 1916, catching the awful impact of thudding billy clubs, of bullets and bombs and sudden death, letting his camera soak up the slaughter in pitiless detail...
...production at the Hotel Bostonian does not muster enough reserve to pull off the play's melodramatic interludes. If the actors performed in a more genteel, more Victorian key, they might be able to speak Ibsen's moody lines more comfortably. Their aggressive, coloquial style tends to rinse away the realism which Ibsen wanted to achieve...