Word: loutish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nikita's Sins. The catalogue, which was evidently compiled by Ideologist Mikhail Suslov, accused Khrushchev of 29 sins, immoral, illegal, or fatheaded. Basically it corroborated earlier reports that Nikita's underlings could no longer stomach his loutish, highhanded ways or condone his persistent bungling of agricultural, ideological and foreign policies. But there were some intriguing elaborations, such as charges that he tried to make Wife Nina chairman of the Union of Soviet Women, that he "antagonized intellectuals," and clung to uneconomical building plans (he insisted on five-story rather than twelve-story apartment houses, on underpasses rather than...
...short of education and loutish of manner; even after he had become the richest man in the country and an intimate of statesmen, he ate ice cream and peas with his knife and wiped his fingers on his neighbors' clothing. But the territory he controlled was larger than Western Europe, its security was protected by strings of private forts erected and maintained by Astor, its commerce was served by a vast private fleet that carried countless thousands of furs to Europe, China, India and South America. In matters of border disputes over the fur trade, the government of Great...
...does spark one sizzling scene of class animus at a drunken, brawling Christmas party. The wing commander (Dallas Cavell), a jowly autocrat who regards the conscripts as disgusting animals and wants to see them make a loutish display of themselves, calls for some rock-'n'-roll music. Pip stops the music and coaxes one of the conscripts to sing The Cutty Wren, an old folk song of peasant revolt. It begins with the stilly calm of a Christmas carol, but as the stanzas become more aggressive, the conscripts improvise a louder and louder beat of spoon on glass...
...they lurch through a succession of army camps, prisons, hospitals and asylums. The characters are often almost the same as in Decline and Fall: for the wealthy Mrs. Beste-Chetwynde and her brattish son Peter, Auberon substitutes the wealthy Lady Julia Foxglove and her brattish son Martin; for the loutish Percy Clutterbuck there is the loutish Kenneth Stout; for the sycophantic Dr. Augustus Fagan there is the sycophantic Brother Aloysius. Even the scenes in The Saga are hauntingly familiar: a garden party that is entertained by the Bidcombe Platinum Band recalls the garden party of Decline and Fall, with...
There are minor compensations. Parrish brings Claudette Colbert back to films for the first time in five years. As Troy's mother, she is mostly wasted on Karl Maiden, her loutish husband, and on script inanities (these young people "are just trying to fight with their own identity"). But she makes a splendid animated advertisement for Sophie of Saks Fifth Avenue, whose clothes she models with crisp Technicolored distinction. And there are some heart-stirring shots of quilted green land and shimmering lakes, of whaling boats and silver-spired churches taken on location around Windsor, Old Saybrook, Mystic...