Word: middlebrows
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...give its awards to people who trumpet the loftiness of their themes, contented itself with nominating Hitchcock five times as best director. The only Oscar he got was a career-end special. Even after his death last week at 80 in his Bel-Air home, there were implacably middlebrow critics insisting that Hitchcock never placed his impeccably subtle technique in the service of "serious" matters. As if his lifelong contemplation of the way disorder violently intrudes upon the blithe assumptions of ordinary men that the world is a logical place were not a serious theme (see Kafka). Or that...
...nine decades, Liang took part in most of the great debates and political movements that have swept China since the downfall of the imperium. But throughout, his influence has primarily been restricted to what Alitto has called the literate "middlebrow" strata of Chinese society. Alitto, however, chafed in his role as the chronicler of one man and his influence. Consequently, the book is marred by his attempts to make Liang an overarching symbol for traditional China, striving to capture in one life, the dilemmas of an entire nation confronted with alien cultures and agonizing domestic political choices...
...from his best movies--the best, even, of this limited, specialized kind--than Carpenter may be capable of, but Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13 are such neat packages of self-acknowledged hokum that it is difficult to resent or condescend to them. Compared to the slackness and swaggering middlebrow pretension of recent thrillers like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Last wave, they are remarkable for their stringent suspensefulness, their fundamental lack of conceit, the inventiveness of numerous details and situations, and a sharp, reverberant visceral twang...
...last week Britain got another T. and B. tabloid, a near clone of the Sun and Mirror. Express Newspapers Ltd., publishers of the once middlebrow and increasingly titillating Daily Express (circ. 2.5 million), launched the 32-page Daily Star (initial circ., 1.25 million). Selling for 6p (roughly 12?), slightly less than the Sun and the Mirror, the Star is being printed on underused Express presses in Manchester and distributed only in the North and the Midlands for the moment. Penetration of the rest of England is planned for the spring. Says Star Editor in Chief Derek Jameson...
...that plague made-for-TV movies. It is not an uplifting message drama about a trendy social or political issue. It is not a vehicle for TV stars seeking to plug an upcoming series or special. It is not a violent action spree or a self-congratulatory exercise in middlebrow culture. Verna: U.S.O. Girl is just a small story-too small for a theatrical film but perfect for the tube-engagingly told by talented people. It can stand as a model of what made-for-TV movies could and should...