Word: spinster
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...anguished conundrums of Ingmar Bergman and to the 1967 Harold Pinter film Accident, another story of academics in rural England, a young man who dies violently and his mysterious death-magnet of a girlfriend. It can even be seen as an upscale soap opera, in which a decent spinster finally stumbles into a mature, equitable relationship with the local policeman. But Hare is after much more: the composite portrait of middle-class England, a community in which an affable exterior hides sexual crimes behind the privet hedge. The casting coup of Redgrave mère et fille pays handsome dividends: Vanessa...
...hangs out to dry is an odd lot of small-town Virginians. Their matriarch, now dying peacefully, may have helped herself to widowhood with an ax some years ago and then dropped her defunct husband down a well. That possibility thrusts itself on her daughter Sybill, a middle-aged spinster who sees a hypnotist to have her subconscious unclogged. Her mother inconveniently expires before Sybill can begin an inquiry. To her siblings, that is just as well. They, and the cousins and in-laws who gather for the funeral, regard talk of ancient murder as tiresome and hysterical. This...
...longtime fan of Keillor's, I have often been struck by his meld of nostalgia with bitterness that reflects small-town life in the Midwest. We accept his barbs at our memories of narrow-minded ministers, spinster schoolteachers and children who try to comprehend the town's hypocrisy, simply because Keillor has the knack of laughing with us at our human frailties. He can make us think about our Minnesota forebears without hurting too much. Keillor is all of us who have left the old ways, but who recall the shimmering mists of childhood somewhere in the snow and wheatfields...
...sold 250,000 copies in the U.S. and Canada plus thousands in six translations. It outraged many moralists, infuriated not a few scientists who questioned its reliability and was boon to radio comedians who found that Kinsey's name had become and acceptable synonym for sex. One spinster snapped back at Kinsey that his elaborate study only confirmed what she had known all along--that "the male population is a herd of prancing, leering goats." More serious critics took issue with the Kinsey method itself, and many of the [methodological] faults found with the male report also...
...western--the story of two cowboys, Charley (Costner) and Boss (Robert Duvall) in 1882, caring for their herd and each other, wandering into town and into trouble. It is peopled with the usual suspects: the corrupt sheriff (James Russo), the mean rich guy (Michael Gambon), the warm, weathered spinster (Annette Bening). The plot is basically a real-estate wrangle: whether Boss and Charley have the right to graze their herd on land claimed by the rich guy. And there's a lovely interlude with Charley and the spinster, where the cowboy has to recall gentlemanly codes of conduct (picking...