Word: mordant
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...opposing camps and also alludes to the rift between Gilmour and bassist Roger Waters, who left Pink Floyd in 1984. It was Waters who in the early 1970s masterminded the band's transformation from an acid-rock act into a sleek, shadowy outfit that used high-tech wizardry and mordant humor to skewer greedy capitalists, warmongering generals and -- most evil of all -- nasty headmasters. With Waters as its leader, Pink Floyd became famous for its surrealistic, multimedia concerts, culminating with the tour for the band's 1980 album The Wall. Those shows were extravaganzas that ended with...
Middlemarch is a moral tale, but one told with frequently mordant wit. At the novel's center are two altruists whose yearning to serve others is frustrated in large measure by ill-advised marriages. Dorothea Brooke (Juliet Aubrey) is ward of her eccentric uncle Arthur (Robert Hardy), who is known as "the worst landlord in the county" for the shabby way he treats his tenants. Dorothea's desire to improve the lot of others leads her to wed the Rev. Edward Casaubon (Patrick Malahide), a scholar and cleric more than twice her young age. She is enraptured by his dream...
...fashion photography. And there is something valuable about looking at Avedon's work apart from what we know about the charmed kid who blew into the offices of Harper's Bazaar in the late 1940s and set the superexotic Dovima against a trio of dancing pachyderms. Nevertheless, Avedon the mordant portraitist cannot be understood without reference to Avedon the fashion photographer. From his work for Harper's and Vogue he learned how much of what goes on in front of a lens is sheer performance, and he learned the extent to which a photographer can draw out of that performance...
...Lewis, who was reared in England yet carries an Irish passport, there is a strong streak of Eire: the tale-spinning, the mordant thoughtfulness, the smile in his soft voice that lightens his remarks with a puckish irony. His father Cecil was the Irish-born poet laureate of England. His mother is actress Jill Balcon, whose Baltic Jewish father, Sir Michael Balcon, ran Ealing Studios, Britain's renowned comedy factory. Daniel's sister Tamasin, four years older, is a documentary filmmaker and writer on food...
...Broadway sensation. Critical and popular response to All in the Timing, an evening of six Ives caprices, has cued a stampede to New York City's tiny Primary Stages, from whence they will soon move to roomier quarters. But Ives is more than a Manhattan fad. He is a mordant comic who has put the play back in playwright...