Word: grittier
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...current wave of concern about TV violence seems oddly timed. The violent action shows that flourished on TV a decade or so ago--The A-Team; Magnum, P.I.; Miami Vice--have largely disappeared. The few crime shows left are cerebral dramas like Law & Order and NYPD Blue, which, though grittier than the older shows, have little overt violence. The sniggering sex talk on network sitcoms is a far more alarming trend. But even if there are some shows that young kids should be shielded from, the question is whether all TV should be held to the standard of safe...
...Food, Lodging" and "My Own Private Idaho" in its genre--realistic yet romantic, white trash splashed with a tinge of wistful mysticism. (It even opens like "Idaho," with two young men standing at the side of a long, deserted country road.) Movies of this kind take place in a grittier America, where people don't have cellular phones or facelifts--instead they are uneducated, and not very well dressed...
Though hardly as romanticized as Kojak or Miami Vice, TV's current reality- based picture of cops is a highly favorable one. To be sure, real cops are a grittier bunch; their jobs are less glamorous, and their human frailties more apparent. All the more reason, these shows say, to admire the tough work they do -- and their openness to scrutiny. "As long as police allow us to film them," says Cops executive producer John Langley, "I feel good about this country...
Last year it was Mafia movies. Next year comes a grittier crop of organized- crime films focused on Chicano street gangs in L.A. Films about Chinatown mobs like the Ghost Shadows can't be far behind. Keep your head down...
...Hollywood, naively believing he could get an acting job just by showing up at a studio. But he wasn't pretty like Sidney Poitier or Harry Belafonte, the black leading men of the day, and he soon realized that his chances would be better in New York City's grittier theater scene...