Word: sheerly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
They have been thrust forward along clandestine channels by the sheer will of the President. They have been unveiled in high electronic drama...
...audiences lined up for screwball comedies, wonderful bits of fluff like Bringing Up Baby with Katie Hepburn and The Awful Truth with Irene Dunne. In 1978, a year of falling dollars and rising prices, audiences often made similar choices. Thought was out. Thrills and chills and, most of all, sheer fun were in. Films that did well were ones that packed an old-fashioned entertainment wallop. "There was a big desire for mindless excitement this year," says Gene Stavis, director of Manhattan's American Cinemathèque. "Whether it's laughter or screams, anything that gets the adrenaline...
...answers to these questions are less important than the acceptance of the sheer incongruity of Santayana's words sitting there amid the stench of corpses and the extinction of Jones's vision. The real question is, what sort of culture could, over a space of 50 years, harbor philosophiesas utterly different as Santayana's and Jones's? And how could the two men meet, there in the jungle, beyond all understanding...
Beyond making themselves understood, however, some of the cast falter, unsure whether to play the operetta utterly deadpan--letting the audience laugh at these ridiculous characters--or to reveal that they, too, know the whole thing is a joke. Catherine Weary's sparkling Josephine holds the stage through sheer vocal perfection alone--she could probably handle Puccini with ease. Donald Hovey's Ralph Rackstraw, too, has a full, clean tenor. Now, admittedly there isn't all that much anyonecan make of the milquetoast roles of the love-struck couple; but both Weary and Hovey shuffle between dead seriousness and deadpan...
...yesterday, Jack. Yesterday the Crimson armada was sheer ruthless efficiency. Clean precision. The Dallas Cowboys. Death by the machine...