Word: splendor
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...there's one thing that commercial American films know how to do, it's fill a screen with splendor. A huge screen, like the one in the Grand Palais' Lumiere theater, makes any Hollywood-style movie look better. Basic Instinct, no world-beater, had a pearly, febrile glamour when it was shown on opening night here 13 years ago. And Sith, a spiffy catalog of the things Hollywood does best, found its perfect showcase in the Lumiere. Of course the audience of 2,400 exulted when the Star Wars logo first appeared; that happens any time...
...football and basketball, say, Gale Sayers' and Elgin Baylor's full splendor may be inferred from a single move. But a rooftop homer might have sprung from anyone who ever hit a home run, or from Henry Aaron, who hit 755; and while making one swan dive in the outfield, even Tommie Agee or Ron Swoboda of the Mets is the equivalent of the Giants' Willie Mays. Baseball players plainly cannot be known at a glance. "Every player, good or bad, at one time or other has played like a Hall of Famer and a Hall of Shamer." This...
...greeted with skepticism. Boyer speaks of "the sartorially regrettable 1960s," and Flusser's prose, wobbly at best ("unlike in England, where striped suits are commonplace ..."), goes into nervous collapse at the very mention of the decade. Flusser wants men to stick to a half-century-old notion of tailored splendor, personified by the likes of Cary Grant, Fred Astaire and the Duke of Windsor--all pictured in Clothes and the Man--and exemplified by a range of softly draped clothing, much of it designed by Flusser and also pictured here, frequently...
...splendor and sorrow of the week, there was a final bequest spreading through the square as the service came to a close and the crowd, reluctant to leave, chanted one last time, "Giovanni Paolo! Giovanni Paolo!" Five staccato syllables and rhythmic claps, a football cheer for God's great athlete. And then it was over, and people mingled and smiled, and by late afternoon the young pilgrims had turned the Via della Conciliazione that leads away from St. Peter's into a lively promenade. They broke out coolers of soft drinks. They packed the cafés, strolled down...
...dying duck, the folds of an accordion and the breathtaking flight of a parachute harnessed to the back of a bicycle. When a real peacock appears in the movie's quiet coda, it declines to spread its plumage on demand and the onlookers move on, disappointed. Its splendor, like the Gao children's dreams, remains unfledged and all-too-rarely glimpsed. Fortunately, this is not the case with Gu's talents. He unfolds them masterfully and his Peacock is a marvel that deserves to be admired...