Word: skirmish
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Burn This is too long and digressive, but as staged by Marshall W. Mason and a splendid young cast, it wins laughter in even its unnerving moments. If the narrative is indebted to the mainstream past, the tone has a more avant-garde echo of Sam Shepard -- a border skirmish between knockabout farce and knockdown violence. Yet Playwright Lanford Wilson manages to integrate well-crafted gags, mostly for the surviving gay roommate (Lou Liberatore). He describes his friend's gaudy casket as looking "like a giant Spode soup tureen." He says to the choreographer (Joan Allen) about her boyfriend (Jonathan...
Nowhere has the bike provoked such a sustained and official skirmish as in New York City. Mayor Ed Koch, who suffered a probike mood in 1980 and had bike lanes built, had them eliminated a few months later. By this year Koch had become so antibike that he banned the cycles from several major Manhattan avenues. The state supreme court in Manhattan overturned the ban last month, but did not overturn Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward's opinion about the city's pedalers. "They are scaring the public to death," says Ward, "and we've got to do something about...
This recent skirmish in Zimbabwe's Zambezi Valley was no military operation. The government patrol consisted of game rangers from the country's Department of National Parks and Wild Life Management. The enemy was a gang of poachers that had crossed the border from neighboring Zambia to plunder one of Zimbabwe's most treasured resources -- the last great population of black rhinos living in the wild...
...skirmish in the skies marked the first encounter between U.S. and Iranian forces since Khomeini took power in 1979. The incident occurred while a U.S. P-3 Orion reconnaissance plane and two F-14 Tomcat fighters were flying over the Persian Gulf toward Oman. Suddenly two aging F-4 Phantom jets rose up from Iran's Bandar Abbas air base, near the Strait of Hormuz, and streaked toward the American planes. The Iranians kept coming even after two more Tomcats swept down from a higher altitude and tried to warn them off by radio. One of the Tomcat pilots ordered...
...Gustav Hasford's taut, scary The Short-Timers. Now -- we will say no more -- Kubrick pretties up the climax with a bogus moral dilemma and some attenuated anguish. A viewer is finally left to savor earlier delights: the dialogue's wild, desperate wit; the daring in choosing a desultory skirmish to make a point about war's pointlessness; the fine, large performances of almost every actor (Ermey and D'Onofrio seem sure shots for Oscar nominations); most important, the Olympian elegance and precision of Kubrick's filmmaking. Full Metal Jacket fails only by the standards the director demands...