Word: slapdash
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Espionage Agent (Warner) tries to do for spy hunters what G-Men did for the FBI in 1935. A timely, slapdash nerve-racker, it has none of the sophisticated humor with which, in such superbly organized spy thrillers as The Lady Vanishes, The Man Who Knew Too Much, smart British Director-Producer Alfred Hitchcock makes improbable situations plausible. Espionage Agent is filled with as many improbabilities as spies, and it is almost as hard to avoid spotting them...
...boisterous, likable candidate for the honor which awaits any artist who will seize and work mightily with the material of America. Benton has never painted a picture with the dramatic power of John Steuart Curry's Line Storm or Tornado. Critics have found his color and texture slapdash and harsh compared to that of Iowa's deliberate Grant Wood. But Benton's style, an exuberant combination of cartooning draftsmanship, affectionate realism and tightly organized, undulating pattern, is the most imaginative and distinct of the three...
...money bills and some decision on Court rejuvenation, all the rest of the major constructive measures set for action this session-wage & hour regulation, low-cost housing, executive reorganization, crop insurance, lessening of farm tenancy, and many others- would either go by the board or be whipped through in slapdash form at session's end. The causes of the stall were clear: the legislative machine had been jammed by President Roosevelt's Supreme Court monkey wrench, gummed by the perplexities of Economy. But for all the disaffection created by the Court issue, and for all its readiness...
...Warner Bros, junior cinemusical company has a picnic with the slapdash, rapid lines, but there is nothing slapdash about the glittering specialties or the skilful, engaging music. Top song and top production number: Too Marvelous for Words. Swing High, Swing Low (Paramount) reveals the effects of outrageous fortune's slings and arrows upon the soul of a sensitive hot-trumpet player. Mustered out of the U. S. Army in Panama, Skid Johnson (Fred MacMurray) is not much better than a guttersnipe when he meets Maggie King (Carole Lombard), a stranded dancer working as a manicurist. Things begin to improve...
...with accounts of his family's poverty after his father's death, of his first newspaper job at the age of 14, of his goading ambition, Swinnerton gives over most of the remainder to polite, discreet, tedious descriptions of his writing friends and acquaintances. Not in direct, slapdash conflict, but in a subtle resentment at intellectual slights, does Swinnerton reveal the hazards of his literary life. Thus he rails against "sleek, conspiratorial, mean-spirited bigotries," without denning them, against reviewers who resent his "rise in the world," against old friends who feel insulted if they...