Word: gruffness
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...hour, listen to his Edmond Dantes. The immature, innocent tones are tortured out of him; as he withers in prison, and is schooled in bitterness, his voice trudges down an octave, until by the time he has escaped and become the vengeful Count of Monte Cristo, he sounds as gruff as a great troll. It's an epic vocal performance...
...four-month-old crisis facing the tiny Balkan nation, he answered, "In my opinion, wars could be short or they could be long. But they almost always end at the (negotiating) table." Behind his back, a police interrogator cut him off. "This is one war, " said the gruff voice, "that won't end at the table...
...Stiglbauer's first day of school, the police had to arrest students in nine fights--all before the morning bell. Inside the school--where test scores had stagnated below the 50th percentile--students routinely told off teachers. In response, Stiglbauer hired a gruff former New York police detective as her disciplinarian in chief. Her staff hauled the parents of truants into family court. And once kids were in her grasp, Stiglbauer never let them go. She "invited" struggling students to intense early-morning, after-school and summer drill sessions. But the bonus classes became so popular that close to half...
...little different. The staff here can't wait to thrust a green-and-black Xbox into your hands, show off dozens of cool games--and loudly taunt the game spooks up the road. "Let's face it, Nintendo's system is for kids," says Robbie Bach, Xbox's gruff-voiced team leader. "We're for sophisticated gamers. I don't know any 30-year-olds who want a GameCube...
...Movies, of course, are not documentaries; and movie directors are not obliged to tell the truth about themselves or their countrymen. An American might warn foreigners about inferring too much from the gruff heroes and idiot pranksters of Hollywood pictures. A Japanese person, when asked about that nation's cinematic self-portraits, can sagely reply that it's only a movie. Most films are more eloquent about their makers' intentions than about their society's ills. And films about a foreign culture say more about local fears than about the country in front of the camera...