Word: melodrama
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...cutting David Stockman is often referred to as "the brilliant 34-year-old conservative," but as Russell Baker noted in a fine, wry column, "Whom the media would destroy they first make young and brilliant." This happens, Baker suggests, less from cunning than from an occupational instinct for building melodrama. Just wait, Baker predicts: an audience that is mostly neither young nor brilliant will be "easily amused at seeing whippersnappers get their comeuppance...
...TALLEY'S FOLLY could boast only these accomplishments, it would be a successful melodrama, no more. It gains more stature by introducing the politics and history of the time it's set in--not in an obtrusive, doctrinaire way, but as a distant backdrop which only infrequently comes into full focus. Wilson doesn't so much expound the politics of America during World War II--the confusion on the left, the economic uncertainty, the awe at America's slowly unflexing muscles--as weave it into his characters' histories. At great length, with much defensive joking and shuffling of feet. Matt...
Like the set and lighting design, the other elements of the production suffer more form misconception than from poor quality. Kean has her actors play their scenes broadly, often replacing tragedy with hokey melodrama, inspiring peals of unintentional laughter from the audience...
...soon-to-be father of Arthur--hacks through the earnage and calls out to Merlin "I must be King! I must have that sword! I must have Excalibur!" Merlin cackles "In time, Uther, in time." It's a marvelous seene. It promises L'Mort d'Arthur as grand pulp melodrama, with the perfect mixture of Marvel Comies and subtle satire...
...Melodrama, after all, is what Postman is all about. Chambers and Cora plot to kill her husband so they can be together, and after one botched attempt, they succeed in murdering him in a staged car accident. This gets them in trouble with the law, but with the aid of a serpentine lawyer, they manage to get off. Cain wrote his novel in the mucous-ridden voice of the truly paranoid chain-smoker, and his hard-boiled story was really a then-shocking morality play where morality loses all together. Everyone turns on everyone else; Cora turns on Chambers...