Word: idiom
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...splashy but tamed by good taste. The expertise of his orchestral writing is remarkable-bold blocks of brass sound, piquant wisps of woodwind, supple simplicity in the strings. Perhaps the most important thing about his composition is that he has dared to opt for tradition over "now" chic: the idiom is tonal and reflects the post-romantic passions of the early 20th century...
CLAVELL does not have the artistry for stylization, and he cannot invent a full folk idiom. His dialogue remains strictly functional, hardly, in any dramatic sense, dialogue at all. He is tough-minded, and is very matter-of-fact about Satanism, religious fanaticism, and brutal deaths; but there is so much dynamic material that we are not sure of how we should respond to anything...
...clarity and coherence. As a full-fledged (though nonpracticing) doctor, he certainly does not inflate pot; he seems to see it simply as a pleasurable, nonaddictive drug somewhat less harmful than alcohol. Moreover, Michael has a kid brother Douglas, a student with a fine ear for the funky idiom of youth plus patent expertise about marijuana as a commodity and a mystique. Combining their talents under the pseudonym "Michael Douglas," the Crichton boys manufactured Dealing in a matter of months...
...have objections to either, there's a lot of objectionable material in Jesus Christ Superstar. This recorded "rock opera" makes an honest and often very interesting attempt to do three difficult things: reinterpret the events of the last week of Christ's life, set the new interpretation into the idiom of mass culture with modern language and characterizations that carry parallels in rock-culture and contemporary politics, and put the result into the form of conventional opera, orchestrated with rock music...
...unfurls. And unfurls. For 21 hours Little Big Man turns the tableaux on nearly every aspect of Western man. Thomas Berger's panoramic novel owed its salinity to an immediate relative, Huckleberry Finn, from which it ransacked idiom and hyperbole by the chapterful. Like Huck, young Jack had no social insight; he accepted violence and duplicity the way he regarded sleet and fire−as aspects of earthly life. The film happily preserves the chronicle's innocence, if not its exact text...