Word: solemn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Lester, in fact, is at his very best when he is undercutting the solemn - and often inhuman - pomposities of power on display. This movie's first sequence, for example, shows the musketeers' efforts to rescue a spy from a firing squad, greatly assisted by the fact that a) it requires something like five minutes to load and aim a matchlock gun and b) using this very latest thing in weaponry, an entire squad of men is likely to miss a stationary target not ten paces away. A little later the French monarch and his retinue pause on their...
...beautiful, clear half moon eerily illuminated the long, solemn march south, down Route 1 between the South China Sea and the stark, lovely silhouettes of the Annamite chain to the west. Trucks piled high with baskets, furniture and clothes were packed with 50 and 60 people in the rear. An army deuce-and-a-half rolled by, claxon blaring, three dozen faces peering from the back and five more Vietnamese sitting on the hood. Three old Citroëns, looking like something out of an old French police thriller, glided silently by with no fewer than 20 Vietnamese inside...
...some extent a great man can control his autobiographer. With biographers he must trust to luck, and James Thurber has not been lucky. A couple of years ago, an academician named Charles Holmes produced a solemn literary biography called The Clocks of Columbus, in which he discerned, for instance, three levels of language in the 2,500 words of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Now comes New Yorker Writer Burton Bernstein with a drink-by-drink analysis, or bibulography, of the humorist's sometimes agonizing life...
...months ago, nothing would have been more amicable than a meeting between President Ford and Republican Senators. But last week, when nine members of the Senate's conservative steering committee were ushered into the Oval Office, the mood was solemn. The Senators, led by Idaho's James McClure, were there to deliver, in effect, an ultimatum. Stop your leftward slide, they warned the President, or we will stop supporting...
...shout that loud and clear, right now," declared a Senator. Nor would they tolerate the nationalization of any troubled industry like the railroads. "We are on the brink of socialism," said a participant. "We want a clear commitment that he will not compromise the free enterprise system." Despite their solemn admonitions phrased in blunt language, the Senators came away believing they had not got their message across to the noncommittal President. "We sensed the same old attitude," said one of them. "We still get the feeling that the White House thinks 'Where else will...