Word: thrill
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...balcony tenorizing of It's Now or Never, the final detonation of pain and taunt in Are You Lonesome Tonight?, the choir-soloist power of the hymn He Touched Me--his voice breaking poignantly at the end of the hymn, as if he had just seen Jesus--these still thrill and haunt. So does his desire to please an audience of kids and grandmas instead of comfortably occupying a niche, as almost every pop star has done since...
...another planet in the same solar system, one that was a mere seven-months' flight away? Mars had a warm, dense atmosphere, water, floodplains. Last August brought news of a meteorite, most likely from Mars, containing minerals and other evidence of a long-past microbial life; a thrill was felt around the world...
Tonight the thrill is greater. Earlier in the day, a rocket ship dropped a cluster of airbags into the flood delta of a valley called Ares, and all the Main Street parades and the hot dog cookouts and three-legged races stopped cold. Five hours later, televised pictures emerged depicting a rust-colored desert with rust-colored rocks and a distant hill against a gray-brown sky. The scenery was boring, the excitement overwhelming. People on TV spoke of how great and adventurous America is, how like a Pathfinder--a nation of explorers and pioneers. But the feeling...
...stag loops and major-studio product--would grind away in Main Street fleabags and drive-ins, inflicting their lurid, no-budget fantasies on generations of bored salesmen and horny teens. Hollywood put sweet dreams on screen; exploitation directors filmed the raging id. See brutal men sweat over balky virgins! Thrill as mousy guys find sluts whose sexual appetites are insatiable! Or, as Rene Bond says it in Edward D. Wood Jr.'s 1971 Necromania, "insashable...
...actors go bigger, so does the film; it's the most delirious major-studio melodrama since Natural Born Killers. But it's also dead serious--because Woo has restored moral gravity to acts of violence. This isn't just a thrill ride; it's a rocket into the thrilling past, when directors could scare you with how much emotion they packed into a movie...