Word: statical
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...their 14th revolution, Eagle's descent engine was fired, slowing the module down and dropping it into the orbit that would take it to within 50,000 ft. of the lunar surface. The crucial word from Houston was relayed by Michael Collins, Columbia pilot, when a burst of static momentarily cut Eagle off from the ground: "You are go for PDI [powered descent insertion]." Again Eagle's descent engine fired, beginning a twelve-minute burn that was scheduled to end only when the craft was within two yards of the lunar surface. One of the most dangerous parts of Apollo...
...young boy who is in the center of the film is caught in a home of pervading ugliness and static emotional vacuity. Trapped in the background at a dinner table which serves only as a battleground for his parents (a grotesque self-parody these since they are played by Cahbrol himself and his beautiful actress wife Stephan Audran), he tries to escape first by minor acts of destruction and finally by placing plugs in his ears. After he does so, Chabrol repeates scenes we have witnessed earlier, only this time without sound. As expressed by a slightly closer camera...
...contradiction between supposed free will but actual determinism continues throughout. The first flashback's subject--the end of Lola's affair with Frantz Lizst--couls show her perfectly free (it's constantly filled, for example, with romantic music), and therefore like the heroes of Ophuls' early films. But Ophuls' static one-shots emphasize the separateness of the two lovers. Large objects in these shots' foregrounds express their estrangement. The characters' harmonious existence depends now entirely on their restraint, their good taste (Lizst, for example, being a musician). There is no exuberant, graceful triumph over surroundings; the first time a character...
...return to the circus takes Lola backstage to her dressing room, a cage behind which pass actors staging her childhood. The camera follows them back and forth, passing in the middle of each are the sick, static Lola, and provoking a second flashback. In it Lola, a child still mourning her father's death, accompanies her mother aboard ship only to discover her affair with an officer. The sweeping camera movements which follow this child through the ship and express her curiosity and longing, ironically stress the objects and walls that confine her movement through the cramped lower deck...
...style and the meaning of the whole sequence of events to this point show a great development for Ophuls. The settings (in particular the use of foreground objects) and the relatively static camera and quick cutting emphasize the fixity of Lola in her settings. Ophuls does not develop a romantic personality in the abstract; he derives the meaning of her life from her changing position and motion in a setting. The inescapability of Lola's physical settings, her existence in the physical world, is the reason her ambitions are defeated--but it's also the basis of her fleeting triumph...