Word: understatedness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Act of Atonement. Black and White in Color is the dark-horse winner of this year's Oscar for best foreign picture. It was filmed by a French unit in the Ivory Coast in what almost amounts to an act of atonement: the movie not only presents a comically...
The first act is staged much as Dame Edith Sitwell first performed the play in 1923 to a baffled and exasperated audience in Aeolian Hall in London. The stage is mysteriously covered in movers' white sheets, while the excellent six-piece orchestra (directed by John Major) playfully accompanies in formal...
Bound For Glory. Making film biographies is tricky business--it's hard to satisfy the often conflicting demands of entertainment and history. In Bound For Glory, based on folksinger Woody Guthrie's autobiography of the same name, screenwriter Robert Getschell and director Hal Ashby (who lathered up Shampoo) have tried...
The film's technical aspects complement the carefully understated acting and direction. Haskell Wexler's cinematography is skillful and at times breathtakingly beautiful, but it is never vulgar or flashy. The sets are simple and the props few; Ashby avoids mounting exhibits of United Artists' vast collection of antique furniture...
Less understated in its irony is a piece called "Woman Caught Unawares." Here the subject stands frozen in an obviously impromptu pose, her knees buckled inwards and both hands clasped embarassedly together in front of her waist. The funniest and most clever part of this pose, though, lies in the...