Word: stridently
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...blown away in less than 30 seconds. For two acts that seem to last longer than the Normandy Invasion, the audience must bear with what passes for dialogue composed of tribal myths, the ramblings of a sensitive and frustrated anthropologist, and the rantings of West and his engaging but strident captor, Carlos...
First, You Cry is not, as one might expect, Mary Richards Gets Cancer. Rather than fall back on her considerable resources of charm, Mary plays Rollin as a rather cold and strident woman at first. When tragedy strikes, she gradually works shades of anger, maturity and self-doubt into her characterization. As a result, Moore does not just jerk the audience's tears but gives a sense of how one complex life can be redefined by an encounter with death. She also plays some extraordinary scenes, including one where we see Rollin's face as she examines...
...regard as the first Pope was also, of course, the first non-Italian Pope: Simon Peter, the "rock" on whom Jesus Christ said he would build his church. For most of St. Peter's 263 successors, however, it was not the universal nature of the church but the strident demands of local Roman politics, with its aristocratic, warring families, that determined their selection. No fewer than 205 of them were Italians. The 58 exceptions were 15 Greeks, 15 Frenchmen, six Germans, six Syrians, three North Africans, three Spaniards, two Dalmatians, two Goths, a Thracian, an Englishman, a Portuguese...
...most depressing spectacles on television is Erma Bombeck's regular weekday stint on ABC's Good Morning America. From her humble beginnings as a syndicated newspaper humor columnist, Bombeck has evolved into a TV personality of the most plastic sort. She delivers her one-liners in a strident vibrato; she luxuriates in canned laughter as though it were the praise of a Nobel Prize jury. Bombeck used to satirize the vulgarity of American suburbia; now she epitomizes...
...amplified. Still, Del Tredici has a winning ear. The eerie whoosh of a theremin, a primitive electronic instrument, signals Alice's alarming growth. Tempos slow down and shoot forward, keys slip in and out of place with perfect illogic. An orchestral fugue that accompanies the jury's strident deliberations builds from a contrapuntal quarrel among strings to a glorious jumble of trumpet snorts, tuba blats and whinnying violins. And, near the end, there is a lovely lullaby that evokes Carroll's affection for the real-life Alice, little Alice Pleasance Liddell - and everyone's nostalgia...