Word: splendid
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...sensible aspirations of foreign films; he means to get at the way real people behave, without the hysterics of Hollywood melodrama. So Passion Fish -- a female-rehab movie about May-Alice (Mary McDonnell), an actress made paraplegic in a car crash, and her helpful nurse, Chantelle (the ever splendid Alfre Woodard) -- is notable for what it doesn't show: the collision, the sight of May-Alice's mangled legs, even a clip from , the old movie she watches during the edgy vigil of her recovery. Passion Fish is an antidote to a male-buddy uplifter like Scent of a Woman...
...Iris (Kati Outinen), the stolid young woman on the assembly line, into a keg of emotional dynamite. Kaurismaki's almost-silent movie features a cast of rats -- mother, stepfather, brutal beau -- for whom rat poison may be the best antidote. And for U.S. viewers, Match Factory is a splendid introduction to a world-class (no joke) filmmaker, with a wit as dry as kindling...
...musically we're still in the era of the Dead White Male. Which is why the Bay Area-based WOMEN'S PHILHARMONIC, an all-female ensemble conducted by Jo Ann Falletta, is important in our collective consciousness-raising. On an eponymous new CD (Koch Classics), the group unearths a splendid Overture by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (Felix's sister). But the real pleasures are in the Concertino for Harp and Orchestra by Germaine Tailleferre, perhaps the least known of Les Six, and in two pieces by Lili Boulanger, Nadia's sister. Boulanger's D'un Soir Triste, 12 minutes of heartbreaking...
...know that Professor Schama has a splendid offer," said Knowles. "I, along with a large number of other people, would be very sad if they were to leave the area...
Along the streets, we catch the haggard, unslept faces of the besieged, a glimpse of their trudging, cringing body English. Shops boarded up. The driver, who is, improbably, a Russian, pitches the Renault along, overrevving and popping the clutch, to the National Library. It is a splendid 19th century Moorish building that has been hammered so often, so heavily, that it is a gutted shell. In a city where more than 17,000 have been killed and 110,000 wounded since the siege began last spring, it may be odd to be disturbed by the fate of a building...