Word: paranoiac
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...writes with glum prosecutorial fury, treating as credible any rumor of lurid conduct -- Imelda's alleged lesbian orgies, for example -- that helps his cause. When venturing into broader areas, like Washington's postwar foreign policy in the Far East, the author lapses into a crude historical revisionism, rejecting as paranoiac fancy any suggestion that leftist + insurgencies along the Pacific Rim might have been Communist influenced...
...many, the invisible nature of radiation does stir emotions and feed paranoiac imaginations. Yet by operating for so long behind veils of secrecy, the weaponsmakers have left a void of perception that is all too easy to fill with worries that may or may not be exaggerated. In certain ill-defined and perhaps unknown quantities, radiation in the air, soil and water can, of course, be deadly. Some of its forms may persist for many centuries. As federal officials and fiercely independent private contractors finally step out of the nuclear closet and seek vast sums to clean up the mess...
...newt and toe of frog. More rational observers, too, view Macbeth as fraught with difficulties. Its plot cannot work unless skeptical modern audiences will believe in witches and the supernatural. The central couple kill in unforeshadowed haste and repent in wearisome leisure. As a tyrant, Macbeth seems a paranoiac cross between Herod, slaughtering a legion of innocents to be sure he got the right one, and the pathetic people who kill entire families on purported instruction from God. Thus it is scant surprise that the Macbeth that opened on Broadway last week used up three directors, two sets and five...
...updating these roles. Quaid, flashing the satanic grin patented by Jack Nicholson, ensures that Tuck makes a convincing connection with a friend he cannot embrace until the end of the movie. And Short, late of SCTV and Saturday Night Live, is one deft darling. Jack begins as a wild paranoiac but soon straightens up and loosens up, especially in a maniacal boogie he performs to Sam Cooke's Twistin' the Night Away. If this number doesn't win Short an Oscar, it should at least cop him second prize on Dance Fever. The scene is one more gift from Dante...
...Governor's divorce and remarriage in the far West; a rich candidate's cabbageheaded stupidity in the Southwest; the hold on a Midwestern senatorial candidate by agents of an Arab oil state. The true purpose of these cliches and intrigues is to supply Power with some paranoiac melodrama of the kind that is nowadays never absent from movies about American politics. Pete may be involved, either as unwitting coconspirator or victim, in something more menacing to the commonwealth than a few dirty political tricks. These dawning hints of complicity give him an excuse to renounce political expedience and square himself...