Word: regretful
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...tradition: the chanson. Back in the 1960s, these nostalgic songs captured the hearts of music lovers with their emotion-charged lyrics and rousing delivery, sometimes, but not always, accompanied by the accordion. Charles Aznavour, Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy and others - with their haunting and spirited ballads of regret and doomed love - were in vogue around the world. Now, Delerm and artists like Keren Ann, Benjamin Biolay, Carla Bruni and Thomas Fersen are making chansons chic again. The new-old sound incorporates elements of big band, swing, old-fashioned melodrama and whispery vocals. "Many musicians have a certain attitude...
...Often, the team made those ghosts sing. Three adaptations in the early '90s?Mr. & Mrs. Bridge, Howards End and The Remains of the Day?lit a fire under the damp logs of failure, compromise and regret. These were elegant films, but also powerful movies, tragedies in a whisper. The Hollywood establishment nodded Merchant-Ivory's way, with 31 Oscar nominations and six statuettes; but Merchant still had to work his charm, hard, to finance their pictures. Not to worry. Another meal from this consummate host, this gourmet of life (he owned a restaurant and wrote several books on cuisine...
...Maureen, a middle-aged shut-in with a severely disabled son. Momentarily distracted from self-destruction, the four get to comparing notes. (Maureen is immediately judged the top gun, misery-wise. "Oh, yeah," says Jess. "That's a no-brainer. Don't change your mind. You'd only regret it.") They decide to put off jumping and instead form a bickering, wary, ad hoc fellowship. It's like The Breakfast Club rewritten by Beckett...
When I finished Dombey and Sons, I slid the green-bound volumes back next to Great Expectations with a sense of regret. Part of what I love about Dickens novels is their combination of predictability and novelty. Innocents will be menaced, but theyll come through all right or else die heart-rendingly; a young woman will be a paragon of moral virtue; there will be a cast of dozens, representative of several levels of British society. But there will be in that cast one or two really unforgettable characters, and sometimes the innocents will be menaced in really novel ways...
...knew it the book was over. It ended as many of Dickens novels end, with the older generation fading to insignificance, their wrongs righted or forgotten, and the younger generation brave and happy, ready to strike out on their own. And as I closed Dombey and Son, my regret was mingled with fierce curiosity about their fates, and a sense that the unwritten part of their livesthe part that did not hew to the Dickensian pattern I knew so wellmight be more interesting than the part that had preceded...