Word: stolid
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...walks in with a wisecrack. Neither the intellectual pomp inherent in the lecture format, nor the stolid, somber Eliot House library can dampen his compulsive sense of humor. "The plays are the essence of me," he says. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say he is the essence of his plays; his wit flows so effortlessly, so smoothly that it seems innate. Neil Simon, apparently can't help being funny...
...such prayers are a simplistic pipedream at Harvard. This is because Harvard is a particularly stolid institution, well-rooted and paralyzed by tradition. Brown University, for example, no longer takes any kind of action against students who fail one--or even two--courses per semester. The only requirement the university poses to a student who fails a course is that the credit must be made up in order for the student to graduate...
Gregory Peck has gleefully transformed himself into a hulking, slit-eyed, "embodiment of evil." He isn't as awful as you'd expect--he tries hard and he can't help the screenplay, but as an actor he tends to be as stolid and uninspired as this movie. You could, in fact, label The Boys from Brazil "the Gregory Peck of thrillers." But there are compensations...
...breeches. None of the Disney gruel here. Second greatest soundtrack to Days of Heaven. Some filmic dryasdusts dredge up the 1914 seven hour version with Belgian director Lionel Von Rennselaeaer's lighthearted experiments in figure/ground confusion done on highly explosive nitrate stock, but the lead was played by a stolid burgher whose sword work looked something like Boog Powell trying to bunt. Flynn, the great rakehell, leaves no doubt that he knew how to rustle Maid Marian's bustle and no one could accuse his progeny of lacking cojones--witness Sean Flynn's disappearing into the Cambodian jungle with...
What their diary entries would eventually uncover, however, even the nurses were not prepared for. Last week Sister Godfrida, 44, was in jail in nearby Ghent, and her neighbors in Wetteren, a quiet marketing town (pop. 25,000) in a stolid, conservative Catholic area of Belgium, were reeling from shock. The nun, a local woman whose name was Cecile Bombeek before she joined the Josephites, had been accused of stealing more than $30,000 from her elderly patients in order to support a morphine habit. Far worse, after she had been charged with theft, Sister Godfrida placidly confessed to killing...