Word: glossed
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Hard Target would never have been a masterpiece; it lacks Woo's usual subtlety in dramatizing the brutal brotherhood of cops and creeps. It has a promising premise, a Most Dangerous Game gloss about a gang that arranges manhunts for macho millionaires, but nobody has much of a character. The loner hero (Van Damme), the woman in peril (Yancy Butler), the CEO-type villain (Lance Henriksen) and his soulless henchman (Arnold Vosloo) -- the roles are little more than job descriptions. Martial artist Van Damme gets to punch out a rattlesnake and follow this moral code: I shoot you three times...
While most insiders consider insiderdom so distasteful that they try to bury it under a thick layer of gloss, I almost envy the access to information that members of what Newsweek's Meg Greenfield calls the "politico-journalistic elite" enjoy. I'll admit the possibility that I'm not asking the right questions of my interviews or understanding the full meaning of their replies. But seasoned reporters tell me that wading through ten minutes of "squishy" chaff to get a few sentences of pith isn't an unusual experience here...
...anyone who has listened to his records or seen him perform knows, Isaak is the genuine article: a pompadoured anachronism who grew up in the blue-collar cow town of Stockton, California, listening to Dean Martin, Louis Prima and Hank Williams Senior. By putting a cutting-edge gloss on a vintage 1950s and early '60s sound, Isaak, like Lyle Lovett and k.d. lang, avoids parody by dint of sheer talent and a playful sense of irony...
...Owen negotiations in the vague hope it could somehow make them turn out better. How much Clinton expects to change the existing plan is uncertain, though U.S. officials did vow not to force anything on Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Secretary of State Warren Christopher put the best gloss he could on the importance of "bringing the full weight of American diplomacy to bear." The U.S. was for the first time taking a direct role in the negotiations. Washington will send its own envoy, veteran diplomat and current Ambassador to NATO Reginald Bartholomew, to take part in the talks...
...Salient as "fetid excreta." Needless to say, I question the Salient's committment to racial equality when it writes off these complex and often charged subjects as "sub-amateurish." It is also important to note than the Salient article irresponsibly (and admittedly so) selects an uncharacteristic quotation to gloss judgment over the entire magazine (and dangerously close to the entire bi/gay/lesbian community), a tactic which strikes me as more "sub-amateurish" than anything printed...