Word: overwrought
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that his fixed state and slightly withdrawn I've-been-through-hell voice are chic affectations adopted to suit the role of Tough Young American Novelist. He avoids the stylized macho disillusionment that characterizes much Hemingway imitation--and for that matter, much of Hemingway. His voice, with its tightlipped, overwrought intensity, is a voice terse enough for the end of the world. He and his characters, uptight and dream-ridden, have stared into the intolerable darkness and can hardly bear to speak anymore...
LIKE ANY BURLESQUE, Has "Washington" Legs? depends heavily on individual performances and a lot of business. Stephen Rowe, as the hapless Joe Veriato, seems overwrought in the first act, his pained expressions becoming tiresome; as his assistant Wesley, Tony Shalhoub succeeds with less mugging. I also liked Eric Elice as the silent Dan Rashur and Thomas Derrah, as the hipster director Mickey Boorman in the first act and the lost actor in the second half...
...pale in comparison with those of Russell, who has become the high-brow equivalent of Peter Bogdanovich, a professional--yet always employed--failure. In his last effort, he heaped so much simpleminded Significance on top of Tommy that he destroyed a quality score. With States, he takes an already overwrought script and ladles enough technical mumbo-jumbo onto it to make the film almost unwatchable at times...
...secretary's most embarrassing moment? His overwrought, 33-page denial of a report in 1978 that White House Aide Hamilton Jordan had spit his Amaretto-and-cream at a woman in a Georgetown bar. Says Powell: "I should have handled that better. At least I should have typed it single space...
...fatalist a song, "Living Through Another Cuba" has remarkable energy: an overwrought disco tune with a message, it sounds like music to accompany St, Vitus' Dance--or the Dance of Death...