Word: grime
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...enemies also call him the Teflon President; no spills or grime can stain his radiant image. This is a useful quality. Although as king he would enjoy many quaint and archaic privileges, he would also shoulder enormous responsibilities; he would symbolize the nation. At home and abroad, disgruntled people would grumble not against America but against "King Ronald," or, rather...
LIKE "SLIME" and "grime," "sleaze" contains the sound of its meaning. Like "grease" and "squeeze," it's suggestive--onomatopoetic. Moreover, all of these are linked in another way--they have all come to have a political meaning...
...percussion sets a tempo of edgy energy and the horns bleat like Kurt Weill's orphaned children. Ebb never wrote a lyric as clawing as the imaginary one cited above, but he revels in devising anthems of urban indomitability. Everything that outsiders hate about New York City-its grime and pace, its inhabitants' steamroller pugnacity-Ebb sees as fodder for his romantic cynicism. If a Kander-Ebb song rarely reveals deeper moods or meanings the second time around, it certainly holds the moment onstage, by intimidating the audience into forming a beleaguered, defiant community of New York chauvinists...
...Caked in grime, ragged in their new-grown beards, the South Africans had finally begun to withdraw. The last of some 2,000 soldiers were making off with booty ranging from Soviet-made guns to Russian-language maps. Some of their trucks were still decorated with Christmas tinsel. But the condition of the 30-mile-long column was hardly festive. At the village of Mupa, they had to put up a rickety bridge across a swollen river; farther south, they drove past a treasure trove of Soviet-made equipment, including recently developed AGS-17 automatic grenade launchers. After five weeks...
Even more important than actual historical reproduction is Wajda's ability to capture the feel of the age the grime of street life and bread lines, the sense of urgency haunting politicos on all sides of the spectrum, and the pervasive paranoia of a society in lethal flux. Wajda brings forth all the weapons in this director's arsenal, from a droning soundtrack to claustrophobic camerawork, to brilliant contrast between dark night and the torches of the security police. He succeeds masterfully in conveying the dreadful anxiety of living in a totalitarian regime. For if the government of the Terror...