Word: rottenness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...serious ethics problems. Few incumbents lay awake nights worrying about the unemployment line; 88% triumphed with at least 60% of the vote, the classic definition of a safe district. The traditional levers of incumbency, augmented by the largesse of political-action committees, have created this modern version of a rotten-borough system. In the four House elections since 1980, a total of 1,740 seats were at stake, yet only about 30 sitting Congressmen were defeated for reasons other than redistricting and ethics. Old-fashioned democratic reasons, that is, like having a strong opponent or taking stands unpopular with...
Robert Towne's plot recalls the old James Cagney melodramas in which righteous Pat O'Brien fought for his soul and rotten Humphrey Bogart tried to perforate his body. But the moral is utterly today: it's about going straight without paying the price. As handsome and slack muscled as a surfer past his prime, the movie renounces ambiguity for confusion. In the end, like an old set of tires or a frayed friendship, Tequila Sunrise just wears...
...Ugly: The philosophy behind this one is that most people are trying to make themselves look more attractive, so why not be truly original and try to make oneself look ugly? After all, beauty is only skin deep, but ugliness can be rotten to the core...
This summer's environmental assaults, the author believes, have made an Ecotopian world a little more likely. "We have been messing about with the atmosphere in a truly Faustian way. That and the garbage on the shores have put people in a rotten humor." But what will really "be the key to the evolution of Ecotopia" will be a catastrophe at a nuclear plant. "One of these days a nuke is going to blow in the country, as surely as the sun goes up and comes down. It's practically bound to happen, and it will put a whole...
...expect to find subtle performances in this surreal treat. Russell, the criminally beautiful slut-goddess of art-house movies, becomes shrill in the upper registers of emotion. And Oldman is so acutely the rotten kid that you may want to stand him in the corner. These are not heroes to cherish: they are tiny figures on a Blue Velvet landscape, bleating out their obsessions. But in their cries is the music of recognizable people with their defenses down and their lurid nightmares ascendant. In Track 29 every woman is a flower demanding to open, and every man is a little...