Word: miasma
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...coating of gibberellic acid is by no means the first attempt at chemical golf. In 1928 Samuel J. Bens of New York City took out patent #1,664,397 on a golf ball "with chemical pockets dotting the outer skin." When the ball impacted the pockets burst, releasing a miasma of ammonium chloride. This simple method of chemical detection would definitely be a boon to the golfer traipsing his way through a snow bank in search of the elusive pill...
Both visual and musical themes insist on stressing the contradictions of middle-American life. Through a contrast between day and night scenes, Demme unfolds the schizoid nature of CB use. Surfacing under a miasma of grays and blues, the CB becomes a sinister force in the town. Rain also showers the darkness, but it dirties as much as it cleanses, recalling Alain Resnais's evocation of the contaminated rain after a nuclear explosion in Hiroshima, Mon Amour. During the day, when the CB appropriates a docile mask, bright sunshine dominates the cinematographer's vision. The soundtrack, too, depicts both sides...
...pervading color of Ends and Odds is gray, a bleak miasma that convinces one character that "the earth must have got stuck, one sunless day, in the heart of winter." This backdrop accentuates the odd, vaudevillian turns that Beckett still keeps in his repertoire. He tosses off one-liners with apparent ease: "Ah, Morvan, you'd be the death of me if I were sufficiently alive!" His precise stage directions insist that props misfire with exquisite timing. He can make a character comment on a bit of stage business while implying a condemnation of life: "This gag has gone...
...fighting to recover from one of the most destructive earthquakes ever to hit the Western Hemisphere (TIME, Feb. 16). Last week the terrible toll continued to climb as new victims were found-nearly 19,000 dead, 66,000 wounded, at least 1,000,000 homeless.* Amid the miasma of death, new clouds of dust rose from 800 smaller aftershocks that continued to frighten the country; nonetheless, Guatemalans cleared away rubble to make way for rebuilding. Optimists even talked about a revival of the lucrative tourist trade, which provides Guatemala with $85 million a year in foreign exchange...
...Credo," was written in 1936; it was an examination of a phenomenon that still existed. Stavisky is nostalgia for two things--first, for the eternal appeal of the rogue, the high-energy, affable cheap who spends more money than he screws out of other people; second, for the miasma of the thirties, the thrill of the moment when you can no longer be sure that the roller coaster you're on is going to carry you up again, and you just lay back and abandon yourself to the pleasures of a swift rocketing downwards...