Word: randomness
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Gallic gangster movies are like opera libretti; there are certain characteristics common to each succeeding story. These essential ingredients are, in random order: the daring under-world leader, known to one and all as a "real friend," his faithful but careless partner who consorts with loose-tongued women, a rival gang that never plays fair, an array of luscious showgirls, half-naked or otherwise, a huge bundle of stolen money that both sides are after, and various lesser mobsters that are always either being tortured or getting killed. This formula is slightly varied for each production, but the denouement...
...Russia, Japan, the Philippines, Australia. England and the U.S. Now he would like to settle down for a period of solid composing, drawing his inspiration from a notebook in which he jots down the snatches of rhythm, the chords and series of chords that occur to him in random moments. (His friend Darius Milhaud strenuously disapproves of this method of preserving materials: "If a theme isn't good enough to remember," says Milhaud, "I wouldn't dream of using...
Loewe thinks of music in terms of color, once turned out compositions that reflected what he saw on an artist's canvases. For visitors he will still improvise "colors" on the piano, turning out a peacock- blue sonata or red march from three notes offered him at random. Without lapsing into triteness or parody, he has an extraordinary ability to suggest geographical locale, whether it is Scotland, Spain, or the American West, which has never been more eloquently described in melody than in I Talk to the Trees from Paint Your Wagon. He is sometimes accused of being derivative...
...contain the matrix of ethnic minorities found in a big city. There are only a handful of Jews, and virtually no Negroes. About 40 per cent of the people are Catholic. In two days of polling, the CRIMSON survey covered almost every street in the town, selecting at random every fourth or fifth house. At the end of this period, one out of every seven households had been contacted...
...authorities, Slack's plan has drastically reduced crime among boys on whom it was applied. Of the 25 boys under the program, only three have been returned to prison--an amazing figure when contrasted with the national return rate of 50 per cent. The boys were not picked at random; rather, key gang leaders, "incorrigibles," were chosen for the program. In fact, before Slack was interested he had to be convinced that each boy "had seldom or never been able to hold a job, had an extensive court record, had been in correctional institutions, was unable to save and plan...