Word: melodrama
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RHINO! is a brilliantly scenic safari that combines the usual African flora and fauna with highly entertaining melodrama and a sharp sense...
...series is being produced by Four Star Television. Boyer is a co-owner of Four Star, along with David Niven. They are both in the series, which NBC describes as "a comedy-melodrama about a family of jet-set jewel thieves and con men who are masters of separating the pompous rich from their ill-gotten gains . . . played against a backdrop of Riviera beaches, palatial villas, beautiful women and green felt gaming tables...
This standard situation gets anything but standard treatment from Director Ivan Tors and his two scriptwriters (Art Arthur and Arthur Weiss). They have moderated melodrama to the requirements of realism, and they have punctuated their safari with some glorious fun. The episode in which the friendly enemies get looped on native liquor and then go bungling through the boondocks in search of a lone leopard ("You take uh one on uh lef, pal, an' I'll take uh one on uh right") is one of the sappiest hunting scenes ever written. Thanks mostly to the vivid work...
...Gaulle's three volumes of war time memoirs, published for the first time in their entirety, are a rung-by-rung account of that ascent. There were no mysteries about it, and De Gaulle makes none. He has been accused of melodrama, egocentricity and arrogance, but his memoirs are written in an eloquently understated, supremely lucid style. As to the familiar gibe about his Joan of Arc complex, le grand Charles has never believed that he or his beloved France had any special claim to divine protection. True, he was superbly, even illogically confident. But above all else...
Instead of doing anything, Flynn just stands there. Meanwhile Stop Train 349, which might have made a sizzling topical melodrama, is sidetracked by flaccid direction, routine performances, and a script that turns people into points of view. The biggest jolt is pitting Errol Flynn's tall, handsome but impassive son against the Communist menace, and letting the Reds get the best of it. In this generation, Hollywood's good guys appear to be all buckle and no swash...