Word: torpor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Tour (1593-1652). His own Fortune Teller (the subject was perhaps bound to be popular in a country as worried about the future as early 17th century France) is condemned at the moment to a period of freakhood, thanks to 60 Minutes, which briefly rose from its usual torpor about cultural affairs to pillory it as a modern forgery. Reputable scholars agree, however, that there is no real question about The Fortune Teller's authenticity; its age has now been scientifically confirmed. It remains one of La Tour's masterpieces. Cleaned of grime and later repaints...
...grown children, drug-frazzled Kirsten and lard-witted Owen, vow to wreak vengeance on their gorgeous mother Isabel, and their father's best friend from boyhood, whom they take to be the killers. Here, as elsewhere, the author has far more energy than her characters, who sag into torpor when she busies herself with other scenes and lurch groggily back into motion when she summons them again...
...piece, a still life, but understatement--and a raging epidemic of meaningful glances and message-laden smiles--fetter the film badly. When Gilles half-rapes a visitor, the activity is more jarring, more painful to watch, than the plot warrants, simply because it contrasts so sharply with the general torpor. Only one scene is triumphant--when Louise and family friend Yvette (the wonderful Delphine Seyrig, of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie) don slacks for the first time and model them for Gilles, and though it is the opposite of physical flesh-baring, it causes a glee symbolic...
...institutional intervention in politics. What could be the appropriate process for appointing HIID's director and staff? The best that can be expected is that if right- or left-wing people are chosen, their political adversaries will raise hell and try to rouse the vast, annoyed center from its torpor. This is actually what happened in the Harberger case. But it has its disadvantages: the confusion about academic freedom that it produces, the unavoidability of enthroning lackluster figures who offend nobody, and, above all, the failure to deal with the root problem of politics secluded against opportunities for conflict...
...S.D.S. colleagues of the tumultuous 1960s are still under ground. One of them, Weather Under ground Leader Bernardino Dohrn, has become something of a cult role model for the dwindled, sullen ranks of the New Left. Nor have Marshall's Seattle Eight co-defendants lapsed into torpor suburbanus. One was jailed only two years ago for conspiracy, another died after years of ruinous drug taking and late nights, and the others tend to espouse leftist causes that range in tone from Jane Fonda chic to Hanoi histrionics...