Word: tableau
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...strength is the odd detail of natural disaster: "The house became buried to the eaves. Boulders sat on the roof. Thirteen automobiles were packed around the building, including five in the pool . . . The stuck horn of a buried car was blaring. The family in the darkness in their fixed tableau - watched one another by the light of a directional signal endlessly blinking...
...first tableau showed a little owl-and-pussycat boat foundering in a tempest of billowing waves and lyrical lightning. For the next scenes, set in the land of some randy, warlike Pasha, the Soviets seemed to have unwound their every bolt of gaudy cloth. No fewer than five composers are credited with contributing to the noisy score; the choreography, some of it by Marius Petipa, is strictly cut and paste; the plot went down with the ship. But Le Corsaire provides the occasion for some florid dancing, especially in the hands of bravura technicians like Tatyana Terekhova and Farukh Ruzimatov...
...searing scenes from Eugenia Ginzburg's memoirs of the Gulag, Journey into the Whirlwind. An innocent victim of the Stalinist purges, the heroine endures humiliating interrogations, strip searches and endless nights during which she covers her ears to block out the cries of the tortured. In a final, chilling tableau, she even welcomes assignment to the labor camps as a liberation. Viewers leave speaking in hushed tones, bludgeoned by the past...
...Pittsburgh dispute invites the high bench to revisit one of its most controversial and opaque rulings. In a 1984 case from Pawtucket, R.I., the Justices upheld the constitutionality of a town-supported creche in a display that included reindeer, Santa's house and candy-striped poles, saying the overall tableau had a "secular purpose" and "effect." Ever since, lower courts have struggled to apply what has come to be ridiculed as the "reindeer rule." At issue: how much secular camouflage is required to sneak a publicly sponsored Nativity scene past the First Amendment bar on an "establishment of religion...
...scene at Olympic stadium was like a pointillist tableau. Huge white parasols rested on the green infield, ready to shield athletes from the autumn sun. White doves left over from the opening ceremony strutted on the grass while athletes stretched languidly. Then a Korean in white blazer and gloves climbed up a ladder and fired a pistol. The points began to blur: legs pumped, iron heaved skyward, bodies shot forward...