Word: shrill
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...frenzied exodus from the Village. She protects the baby throughout the conflict, risking her personal safety as well as her love for the soldier Simon (Tony Poole), enduring persecution for the child's sake: her unselfishness is complete. In contrast. Michael's real mother--played in fine, shrill-voiced style by Bethany Tanner--is a petty and uncaring termagant, mostly interested in how many of her silk gowns she can salvage from the fray...
Unconventional leads may have sparked the production, even if the supporting cast sagged. But both Henry Higgins (Hollander) and Eliza Doolittle (Tompsett) turn in standardized and mediocre performances. Tompsett's voice is low and well-modulated with a slight Southern softening, and though she tries to shrill, her slummy "Garn..." resonates with upper-class tonality. You can't make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. Only in scenes when Eliza is supposed to be furious with Higgins does Tompsett cast of her placid demeanor, and then she sizzles: her eyes splash cyanide when she seethes, "Just...
...murders that make this narrative so gripping, but Howard's exploration of the group mind behind them. There are risks involved in attempting to re-create actual conversations and inner musings in the now fashionable style of the nonfiction novel. But the author's dialogue has the shrill, soul-chilling sound of truth. The killers are followed step by bloody step from the time of their initiation into the cult, which preached a fanatical hatred of whites based less on actual injustice than on a mystic prediction of black world dominance. All the young men are impressionable, violence...
Nitpicking aside, flaws like these cast doubt on the most basic premise of his book. The Third World War is a call to rearmament, a shrill blast of the trumpet for Western governments to boost their military expenditures now, before it's too late and the crawling armies of Bolshevism engulf what Hackett calls "the free nations of the Western world." He believes the advent of "flexible response" military policies in the sixties--abandoning automatic massive nuclear retaliation in favor of both conventional and nuclear forces--makes land war in Europe a distinct possibility over the next decade...
...prove his point, Janacek moves to the rear of the control room, glances at a panel with such legends as FEED-WATER PUMP FAILURE, STEAM-LINE RUPTURE and RELIEF-VALVE FAILURE, and presses a button. The effect is jarring. Alarms give off an almost hysterical shrill. Control-panel lights flash, and overhead lights dim. He has simulated the rupture of a 21-in.-diameter water line, which can empty the reactor of vital cooling water in less than a minute...