Word: languidly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...characters in White Mischief behave as if they were suffering from a slight but unshakable fever. In some victims the chief symptom is a languid indifference to conventional morality. In others the illness manifests itself in a restless pursuit of the usual home remedies for boredom: drugs, alcohol and, of course, outrageous sex. You could blame this malaise on Kenya's equatorial weather -- bound to have a curious effect on the dank blue blood of English aristocrats. More likely, though, the idle colonial social climate, circa 1940-41, is doing them in. With too much time on their hands...
...sitcoms; swinging singles and unattached parents are in. One new twist, however, is a trend to half-hour shows that eschew laugh tracks or live audiences and aim instead for the mixed moods of comedy-drama. The technique does not always work -- witness CBS's Frank's Place, a languid, unfunny variation on Cheers set in a New Orleans Creole restaurant. More promising is The "Slap" Maxwell Story, with Dabney Coleman as a self-centered sports columnist. Coleman, so delightfully rancid in Buffalo Bill, is more sympathetic here, his thick-skinned pomposity barely disguising the desperate character underneath...
...paper. It is now clear that the Reagan team consciously set out to violate the spirit, if not the letter, of the Boland amendment, which banned U.S. military aid to the contras. This same wink-and-nod approach to legality has often been apparent in the Administration's languid enforcement of civil rights statutes. The freewheeling business climate also owes a large debt to the President's none-too-secret hostility to many forms of economic regulation...
...typical day, Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier does not arise from bed until an hour before noon. Then comes the hard part for Haiti's former leader: filling up the hours until another languid day in exile is over...
...Harrison's direction is fine when it captures the languid rhythm of everyday preoccupations and lets its attractive actors (especially Hallie Foote, the author's daughter) breathe quietly through the lace curtains of memory. The mood is so lulling that the intrusion of climactic plot devices involving an alcoholic friend and a cooty cousin seems not only extraneous but downright rude. There goes the neighborhood, and the movie. Instead of a valentine to his ghosts, Foote finally delivers a tardy, clumsy Easter present: Horton Hatches an Egg. By Richard Corliss...