Word: softened
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...more antiheroic biopic than this one. Or a better portrait of the artist as a hopeless mess. Harris' great performance has a kind of blank grimness; it contains not a single moment of charm or self-awareness. Harris never allows his exhibitions of Pollock's inexplicable gift to soften or redeem the man's monstrousness. The result is a harrowing film, impossible to "like" in any conventional way, hypnotically impossible to turn away from...
...They're offering to soften the closure. It's like that story about the rabbi whose approached by a man complaining that his house is too small, and the rabbi advises him to keep a goat, and then a cow, and then a horse and so on inside the house - and then he advises the man to remove them one by one, and the man feels better about how much space he has. This is what's happening here. I don't believe that Barak is in a position to give Arafat something dramatic on Jerusalem or on the settlements...
...that movie, so far, has been a box-office flop. Smith is a bigger star than Damon, and yet it's Damon who wins the tournament and gets the girl, and it's Smith who needs to get a new agent. BHGs, on the other hand, exist to soften the punch of racially charged movies, to embody the notion that not all racists are bad people. They offer the possibility of grace to all the bigots in the audience. That last group might include a few movie executives...
...Lieberman came out in front of the vice-presidential residence Friday to soften the p.r. ground for the battle, holding a press conference to accuse Republican supporters, via "orchestrated demonstrations" in Miami-Dade on Wednesday, of intimidating the canvassing board into dropping its hand count. Expect Gore's post-certification trump card to be well cared for all weekend...
...Most Intimidating Election-Night Set: ABC. Peters Jennings is presiding from the starship deck of what looks like a rejected set for "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," accessorized with a giant panel of honeycomb, and the ubiquitous New York City streetscape does nothing to soften things. Worse, every person on the team - Jennings, Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts - is forced to stand coolly and uncomfortably, like the keyboard players in an early-'80s New Wave band. Who's the network news sadist who decided anchors suddenly can only seem authoritative if they stand for hours on end? This could...