Word: paroxysm
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...make the world pay heed to a beaten, broken France. Superbly confident, cool under the worst conditions, Talleyrand once sat calmly through an hour-long tirade by Napoleon Bonaparte and heard himself called everything from a liar and a traitor to a coward and a thief. In a final paroxysm, Napoleon described him as a "silk stocking full of merde." Without turning a hair, Talleyrand left the room, remarking only, "What a pity a great man should be so ill-bred...
...Halpern clan is a family of cartoon monsters. Vulgar, egomaniacal Mama (Ruth Gordon) is a compulsive shopper with delusions of solvency. Masochistic Papa (Walter Matthau) is a corner-cutting shoe manufacturer who is going bankrupt in a paroxysm of anguish and gallows humor. Son Bernie (Anthony Holland) is a leaky, self-expressing drip, the kind that leaves a brown stain in a washbowl. At play's end, simple-witted Bernie is out in the once pristine West shilling with a tom-tom for some once noble Indians who are now corrupt enough to con the tourists with their fabricated...
...decision sent JPL into a paroxysm of technical creativeness; Mariner would have to leave the earth when Venus was in a favorable position-something that happens in 19-month cycles. Next chance was the summer of 1962, about nine months from the time the big decision was made. "There's an old saying," says Pickering dryly, "that any worthwhile project takes nine months...
...stood at the head of the opposing forces. In the state capital of Baton Rouge, segregationist Governor Jimmie Davis-a smudged, folk-singing carbon of Arkansas' Orval Faubus-guided his legislature through a stormy special session, signing into law a paroxysm of sweeping resolutions aimed at tearing apart the New Orleans school system and whooping up segregationist emotion. In New Orleans' federal courtroom, U.S. District Court Judge J. (for James) Skelly Wright, who had ordered the school integration, countered every new law with a restraining order. New Orleans-born Judge Wright, in an unprecedented display of judicial power...
...against it." His solution: rendering the novelist's gush of gutter talk through Sennett-like changes of pace, face and place-with virtually a sight-gag per frame. The result: a remarkably faithful translation of the book that the Paris Express summed up as "90 minutes of cinematographic paroxysm...