Word: strung
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Leonard Gardner's script (adapted from his novel) is a loosely strung series of miniature moral defeats that might be called character vignettes if there were any humanity in them. Tully (Stacy Keach) is a drunk, forever down on his luck and looking for a job, who hasn't had a fight in a year and a half. His dismal life with a rummy mis tress (Susan Tyrell) and his struggles to get back into boxing are intercut with the exploits of a younger but no more hopeful fighter (Jeff Bridges), who mar ries because...
...excruciatingly tense moment of resolution is an infrequent interloper among today's backlog of drugstore thrillers. But in Report to the Commissioner, James Mills has created just such an interloper: a story of deep suspense which moves on several planes of confrontation, ambition and human interaction. Slickly written, carefully strung together, Report to the Commissioner skirts the obvious and pivots on the unexpected; in the best tradition of detective stories, it leads the reader warily around blind corners and draws out each moment of uncertainty. And while Mills succumbs to some superficial, even hollow, characterizations, he succeeds in sketching...
...known. The man is faceless-the more so, because he left no known self-portrait; it is just possible that the quick-eyed, copper-haired young cheat at the right in The Cardsharp with the Ace of Diamonds may be La Tour himself. But his life is mostly conjecture, strung between a few documentary signposts. He was born in 1593, at Vic, a town in the duchy of Lorraine. At some time between 1610 and 1616, he is assumed to have gone to Italy and worked in Rome. By 1617 he was back in France, marrying the daughter...
...first line of defense is what less high-strung observers might call simple paranoia. Harrington himself tells the story of visiting a friend in San Francisco and pulling down the blinds because, he says, "I found myself explaining that in the exposed living room I made too easy a target." But at the end the author also finds himself explaining that psychopaths have certain valuable qualities: their daring mocks our caution, their sense of self shames our self-effacement. Swept on by his own rhetoric, Harrington concludes with a bizarre version of the New Mysticism, in which the psychopath...
...residue of times gone by remains. Strung-out freaks panhandle, play music or sit and talk in front of Holyoke Center. Streethawkers confront passersby with Boston's two youth-oriented weeklies, The Phoenix and Boston After Dark. Tourists crowd the shops and streets and restaurants on weekends and sunny days...