Word: maudlin
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...else had written it, A Fine Old Conflict could have been a disaster: maudlin, perhaps, or strident. But Mitford brings a unique background to her memoir. The daughter of a pair of eccentric British peers and the sister of two of England's most prominent fascists, Mitford has some hilarious stories about what happened when members of her family met up with members of her party. For instance, the members of the San Francisco cell were just as awed by Jessica's sister as any other American would have been. Fortunately, Mitford finds the contrast between her upperclass background...
...farm outside Geneva as anachronistic misfits with absurd jobs and lifestyles, it's not because they are misfits, but survivors. They are guardians, and if the flame glows a bit dimly at times, well, there's always hope for the child Jonah. The movie would border on the maudlin if it didn't poke fun at itself and bourgeois society constantly. When Jonah turns at the end of the film and smiles impishly at you, the sunshine that gleams through this movie and smiles in general reaches out a hand. Recommended twice...
Decent Interval. On his final official trip, Kissinger resisted any temptation to grow maudlin. Instead, he spoke of how the fundamentals of American foreign policy, which he had helped establish, would endure. He foresaw no radical change in the U.S. policy of detente toward Moscow; he urged NATO ministers to create incentives for the Soviet Union to seek responsible courses of action. He was optimistic about Middle East negotiations now that the influence of the Palestine Liberation Organization has "been reduced" and relations between Syria and the Soviet Union have chilled...
...part of television's great fall season of sports and entertainment, the debates were also a kind of World Series. If so, compare the correct professionalism of the news correspondents in the debates with those sports commentators who whomp up any event, regale you with anecdotes and pay maudlin visits to the victors' dressing-room celebrations to fawn on the owners. In this chilled televised courtroom, the reporters were the prosecutors. Throughout the debates, a vital distance between news coverage and promotion was still kept...
Still, whatever Ordinary People lacks in sophistication is made up for by the book's vitality and feeling. Its ambitious attempt at capturing a person's pain, anger and joy as he seeks to know himself--an exercise which all too often descends into maudlin intellectual wandering. But Guest succeeds in laying out what it's like to open the closet of one's mind, sort out what's there, throw out what doesn't fit and stack up the rest. As Conrad's psychiatrist points...