Word: thudded
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hoffman carefully modulates his five scenes, using familiar but effective gestures: the shy grin, the hunch of the shoulders, the sudden stare, the deliberate monotonous thud to denote anger. His performance, anything but a star turn, is intelligent, confident and touching. Hoffman brings to mind his ingratiating Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or, even more strongly, his film work in Straw Dogs as a quiet man driven beyond endurance into mayhem. The show never stints on the virulent anti-Semitism of Shakespeare's world, although Hall employs subtle staging and lighting cues to mollify modern spectators' disquiet...
...seasons, to which each human, unfortunately, has only a short-term invitation. "Church Going" deals with a man-made structure. A wayward cyclist stops out of curiosity and enters an empty house of worship: "Once I am sure there's nothing going on/ I step inside, letting the door thud shut." That offhand "nothing going on" builds slowly to signify a loss of faith, of ritual and communal practices. There are no tears, but neither is there comfort; we are, for better and worse...
...suppurating surface, this writer, Philip Marlow, is as racked and brilliant as the man who created him. Marlow, who relishes the cheap irony that his name echoes that of Raymond Chandler's famed sleuth, is a failed novelist hitting 50 with a terrifying thud. His career has been sidetracked by illness and bile. His marriage to an actress (Janet Suzman) is just an awful memory. He lies in a London hospital with psoriatic arthritis, a crippling condition of the skin and bones. The pain and the pain-killers force Marlow's mind down strange old country lanes and treacherous culs...
...finesse of a symphony conductor. The faces in the jury box registered grief and shock during Lipsig's opening statement in Chernow's suit as the maestro described the doctor's tragic demise: picked up by a front fender, smashed into a "shatterproof" windshield, to "land with a thud on the roadway" with "52 bone fractures." After just one day of trial, the city threw in the towel and settled for an undisclosed amount. "Trying a case against him was like playing golf against Ben Hogan," said Linda Cronin, one of the opposing attorneys...
Almost simultaneously with the release in the Middle East, the quiet of a South Pacific dawn in Ouvea, New Caledonia, was broken by the dull thud of smoke bombs and the crackle of small-arms fire. Some 300 elite French troops and gendarmes had launched an operation to rescue 23 Frenchmen from a cave where they had been held by Melanesian separatists. In the 7 1/2-hour gun battle that ensued, two gendarmes and 19 militants died...