Word: tone
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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James Dolbear also fails as Nora's tyrannical husband Thomas, unnecessarily Americanized from Ibsen's Torvald. His mugging and blustering gives the character a sort of musical comedy quality; a cute shallowness. His tone never changes. He's not believable for a second as an ambitious, willful man, tortured by the demands of respectability--he's just a sissy, a bone-headed dolt...
Here is the stigmata, the brand, the taint, clearly seen; the error of wearing white bucks for so solemn an evening, the misdemeanor of a soft, stammering voice, the felony of too loud and sure a tone, the atrocity of a blue suit, here sitting a couple of silent boys with slanted eyes and yellow skin, from here the man who was academically first in the class leaving in discouragement to join Prospect, and here, recurring nearly two times out of every three. Israel's immemorial face is seen; the class has 16 Merit Scholars, 10 were in trouble...
...turned out, Brezhnev was the only foreign party chief present at the party congress in Prague. And when the Soviet leader shuffled to the podium the day after Husák's diatribe, he adopted a far more moderate tone. He alluded only obliquely to the events in Czechoslovakia in 1968. "But one would have to assume," he added, "that the Polish Communists, with the support of all true Polish patriots," would be able "to give a fitting rebuff to the designs of the enemies of the socialist system." The statement seemed to offer Warsaw's leaders...
...Everything We Had employ the techniques of oral history to find the answer. Mark Baker and Al Santoli have skillfully edited and orchestrated their interviews. Nam stretches the form. A crisp, uniform tone suggests that many of the anecdotes may be composites from various sources. None of those interviewed is identified, though a glossary reacquaints us with the language of the war: busting caps for firing a weapon, cherry for inexperience, hooch for shelter, No. 10 for the worst, klick for kilometer, slick for helicopter, Spooky for gunship. Santoli's approach is more traditionally documentary, though both books reveal...
...search for the Holy Grail: the power struggle between Arthur and his half-brother/son (through incest) Mordred. Alas, the film stumbles between episodes, failing to connect the careful pattern of events coherently. The numerous battle scenes--exciting, if a bit gratuitously gory--always run too long. Even the tone of the film vacilates between tongue-in-cheek humor, and at other times, terrible solemnity. Perhaps, the scope of the legend overwhelmed Boorman. But whatever the reason for Excalibur's spasmodic quality, its lack of cohesion prevents it from achieving the epic effect to which it aspires...