Word: lilt
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Everyone who watches the late show knows that the antique French spoke with Oxford accents. Here, though, the aristocrats speak breadbasket American, while the servants talk with an English or Irish lilt -- a subtle joke on the imperialism of American culture. If there is a pitfall in this strategy, it is that American actors are defter at explosions than at epigrams. They are not trained, as the English are, to coil themselves in hauteur. So at times Malkovich plays the evil dandy too diligently; on his brow you can almost see the fop sweat. Then gradually he learns to trust...
Welcome to the world of English writer Dennis Potter: a nightmare realm of domestic violence, scored to the haunting lilt of pop standards. His output embraces dozens of television plays, half a dozen screenplays and two novels. But the range of Potter's work is less impressive than its searing ferocity and compassion. His haunted characters dwell in the surreal land we all inhabit, as we float vagrantly from suffocating reality to liberating fantasy, from pessimism to possibility, from fear to hope -- and then back, always back again, when we realize that the conditional tense holds even more horror than...
...always an intruder from outside -- a narc obsessed with pinning bad raps on musicians, society ladies slumming, rock 'n' roll making rude noises on the periphery -- attacking the soul when it is restlessly idling between gigs. Bird, for all his troubles, is a wonderfully attractive figure, delighting in the lilt of big words and fine phrases, turning the memory of the moment he found his style into a throwaway comic anecdote. When he steals a saxophone from a rival who has gone over to rock, he tootles a few notes on it and says contemptuously, "I wanted...
...speech that had a lilt and a majesty unlike any other he had given in his 16-month quest, Dukakis found the answer. "It is the idea of community," he said. "It is the idea that we are in this together; that regardless of who we are or where we come from or how much money we have -- each of us counts." Using the image of community as a contrast to the "cramped ideals" of the Reagan years, he challenged his listeners "to forge a new era of greatness for America...
Price plays the part of Maranov with, as Libby might say, the grace of a swan, but his Russian accent is unabashedly horrible. But Price's soothing voice is almost enough to forgive him his inconsistent and unconvincing Russian lilt, as is the charming smile he beams at the screen...