Word: tautly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Taut and literate as Shaffer's entertainment is, it could have been merely another of those theatrical arabesques that fade as quickly as the footlights. Two things redeem it from such slickness. The stylish gusto of Baxter and especially of Quayle give the whole performance an edge that could cut glass. Moreover, Shaffer manages deftly to satirize the detective genre at the same time that he constructs a classic model of it. His satire brings out a hint of desperation behind the characters' capering. Ultimately his sport is directed against the games-playing mentality itself, with its retreat...
...unity is Garcia Márquez's treatment of time. Consider the superb opening sentence: "Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice." Such compression of time makes the novel taut with a sense of fate. Atavistic dictates of blood must be followed. Premonitions invariably come true. A series of coded predictions, written when Macondo was still young, are deciphered only when every prediction has been fulfilled, including the final, devastating wind that takes apart Macondo. The future is thus history...
...Publius argued that the Federal Government should allow states the "right of first refusal" in complying with Federal programs, but if they refused to comply (with an order to desegregate schools, for example) the Federal Government could pull the leash taut. New Publius expounds a sort of administratively decentralized liberalism: the Federal Government should define goals and establish priorities, but give over to states the powers of administration, since bureaucratic, central administration tends to be inefficient. The Federal Government, according...
...Yours, followed by her own Pet's Parlour. Dad eventually parlayed all that into an almost endless J. Arthur Rank contract. At Rank, she played in 25 films including a kind of female Andy Hardy role in the Huggett series. Thanks to a restraining bra and taut parental control of her public image (no dates or off-the-shoulder dresses), she played juvenile roles years past puberty. She says now, "I thank God to be out of the country when my old movies come back on late-night television...
...screenplay, by Jorge Semprum and Costa-Garvas, is taut and suspenseful. Raoul Coutard's photography cannot be faulted and is particularly adept in its use of cold steel-like colors to add to the cauchemar feeling of the film. Costa-Garvas' direction is lickety-split and sometimes brilliant (his groupings of the pacifist heroes to show simultane-ously their solidarity, strength and fear; the demonstration scenes, which accomplish effortlessly what Haskell Wexler wasted a whole film on in Medium Cool...