Word: overwrought
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...originated last fall, New England Telephone last week launched two drama-packed TV advertising mini- series that could almost pass for prime-time soaps. Last year similar ads sparked a furor. Their novelty attracted attention and a faithful following. But Adweek magazine columnist John Carroll charged they were "overwrought" and handed them the publication's Badvertising Award. Besides, if viewers must cling to the edge of their seats awaiting the next installment, when will they find time to raid the refrigerator...
...explain his place in history. He would be easier to understand if he were simply larger than life or what his detractors claimed: a self-aggrandizing charlatan. But he took no pleasure in his notoriety; he ran from it. The Selected Letters adds another interpretation to an already overwrought tale. The age demanded a hero, Lawrence qualified, and the 20th century then got what it deserved: a loner, an ascetic, a man who might have been happier as a medieval monk than as the public cynosure he became. No paragon in his own eyes, Lawrence nonetheless remains a haunting presence...
...Bender's offspring are in their ways almost as unhelpful as these strangers. Her daughter Valerie (Heather Tobias, in the movie's only overwrought, misjudged performance) can buy everything but common sense and fills life's emptiness with a riot of ugly possessions. Her son Cyril (Philip Davis) has gone the opposite route. He is a leftover leftist who cannot abandon the habit of Marxist analysis but is unable to believe any longer in its power to effect change...
...figure drawings nothing is sentimental or overwrought. Naked or dressed, their model -- commonly his wife Phyllis -- inscribes herself on one's view without ceremony. Her poses seem fallen into, not directed, as natural and unaffected as could be. But what holds one's eye is the resolution Diebenkorn finds in the architecture of the body: the way a transverse arm cuts across the gourdlike shape of hips, the thrust of a shin redefining the space around it, the clear slicing of light into dark and profile into void. Diebenkorn's line learned its decisiveness in front of the model...
...traditional that at the conclusion of major athletic events the overwrought fanatics rush down from their seats, charge the field and proceed to disassemble the goals...