Word: tone
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Surrounded by a bevy of sycophants, he gives orders with the simple grace and rapidity of an SS Captain. But as the film progresses, the initial hardness and veneer of total control dissipate into a pastiche of the Hollywood studio man, a change in tone that signals Edwards' trepidation at biting the hand that slugged him. Edwards' directing gets in the way of his own script. Every time the charcaters verge on any sort of emotion, they play it for laughs. Reductio ad slapstick...
...Tinsel Town casts on the lives of his characters, the absurd system of priorities that makes an angry man quote box office figures to his wife in the heat of the argument: These are the moments when Edwards nears his goal. Once the focus shifts to Farmer alone, the tone of the film becomes skewed, strained. The film cannot survive on its own, when it's not pontificating on the medium--or the medium's victims--themselves. Edwards, in real life, may be one tough S.O.B., but his film. alas...
Kylian immediately sets a specific tone and atmosphere. His work is often frankly emotional, whether it is the bleak despair of Soldiers' Mass, the pathos of Overgrown Path, the slapstick comedy of Symphony in D or the heroic striving of Sinfonietta, the company's signature piece...
...curious: in a season when the brightest American film makers hope to provoke nothing more complex than a belly laugh or a body blow, the Disney organization has produced a movie that confronts the Dostoyevskian terrors of the heart. In tone, The Fox and the Hound is a return to primal Disney, to the glory days of the early features when the forces of evil and nature conspired to wrench strong new emotions out of toddlers and brooding concern from their parents. The Fox and the Hound lacks the craftsmanship and concise wit that brought a dozen or more characters...
...when he urged Congress to get moving on his budget and tax-cut bills (see following story). But when the questions were about foreign policy-as 15 of 25 were-the Commander in Chief was less clearly in command. Reported TIME White House Correspondent Laurence I. Barrett: "His tone was hesitant. He groped for words, even for ideas; indeed, he seemed less like a President and more like the error-prone candidate Reagan of early...