Word: overtness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Pixote is one of the most powerful films ever made about poverty and oppression in Latin America. Its lack of overt moral commentary is more than compensated for by its stark, at times shocking, realism. Even the most graphic American films seem tame by comparison. Babenco uses scenes of crude abortion and vicious sodomy to capture the misery of an impoverished and overpopulated Third World metropolis. Filth, noise, chaos, this is Pixote's world: grim walls, dim light, inane pop music blaring in the background...
...Shubert Organization, hopes audiences will try to attend the all-day marathon, "participating with the actors in a survival experience." It might seem like an endurance test to devote an entire day to a single show; but then, this show is all about survival and transcendence. Behind its overt stage action is the unlikely but compelling story of how a struggling theater company found its soul and its success with the same desperate gamble ?risking everything on the belief that people could be touched by the melodramatic adventures of a young man on the labyrinthine path to social maturity...
...Marian and his friend is just the latest example of what the FBI calls "technology transfer"-the continuing effort by foreign countries, particularly the Soviet Union, to grab American technical know-how in whatever way they can. The methods, says FBI Spokesman Roger Young, "range from the legal and overt to the covert and illegal. Sometimes they are crude to the point of a car pulling up to a technological trade show and just loading up with free literature...
...work or play, everybody emits wordless signals of infinite variety. Overt, like a warm smile. Spontaneous, like a raised eyebrow. Involuntary, like leaning away from a salesperson to resist a deal. Says Julius Fast in Body Language: "We rub our noses for puzzlement. We clasp our arms to isolate ourselves or to protect ourselves. We shrug our shoulders for indifference." Baseball pitchers often dust back a batter with a close ball that is not intended to hit but only to signal a warning claim of dominance. The twitchings of young children too long in adult company are merely involuntary signals...
...very luckiest-or dullest-of people might testify, individual signals have a way of misfiring just as easily, with results just as calamitous if not as earthshaking. The danger of misunderstanding increases dramatically when even the most elementary signals are used by people in different cultures. The happiest of overt American signals, the circled thumb and index finger, unless accompanied by a smile, amounts to an insult in France. The innocent American habit of propping a foot on a table or crossing a leg in figure-four style could cause hard feelings among Arabs, to whom the showing...