Word: mordant
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...welcome change. But Pram, as he's popularly known, found the place foul and unlivable. The gutters were full of human ordure and the air stale from the smell of "cheap death," he recalled in the story "My Kampung," from his early collection Tales from Djakarta. Its mordant stories revolve around what is now Jakarta's central Merdeka (Freedom) Square, and the streets close...
...From the world's most populous Muslim country comes a mordant, confounding thriller about an unsuccessful artist who becomes an art-world sensation after his wife convinces him to build a sculpture around her aborted fetus. Suddenly he's besieged with commissions - but where to find more dead babies? As slick as it is sick, the movie could be Anwar's calling card for international employment, if only Hollywood moguls wanted something out of their own narrow range. The Forbidden Door is one more NYAFF example of what movies could be but rarely dare...
...among us has not mocked a mime? Those mordant, white-faced pierrots, especially of the Russian variety, are usually about as funny as Dostoevsky, as buoyant as Brezhnev. Even passionate Cirque fans - who love the company's acrobats and plate-spinners, its mix of traditional circus and modern theatrical sorcery - have wished that the clowns would be sent out, and the Mime Safety Board called in. Over the years, in seeming response to public disfavor, the Cirque brass has severely reduced the time given to clowns. They were prominent in early traveling shows like Saltimbanco and Alegria, then mere supporting...
...However Arabic or Russian the orchestrations, Jarre's music fit the plangent mood of French postwar pop: the mordant, worldly-wise chansons of Gilbert Bécaud, Marguerite Monnot, Jacques Brel, Charles Aznavour. The simple melodies follow a clear ascending or descending line, and sound either inevitable or predictable, depending on the extent of the listener's fondness for the form. Jarre didn't write pop songs, exactly; "Lara's Theme" was his one Top 40 hit. But the sound was marketable in movies, and after Lawrence, Jarre's tinny, tinkly, discordant music was in high demand by directors searching...
...designer and mordant fashion critic who dared to call Madonna the "bare-bottomed bore from Babylon" died Oct. 19 in Los Angeles. Richard Blackwell, a.k.a. Mr. Blackwell, of the infamous worst-dressed list, made a name for himself not with his own creations but by skewering those sported by celebs on the red carpet. In addition to Madonna, Blackwell famously knocked Camilla Parker Bowles as "the Duchess of Dowdy" and even put the newly married Diana, Princess of Wales, at the top of his list...