Word: yarns
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Boat is an exciting adventure yarn, full of battle tension and long bouts of boredom on long patrols. But as a novel, its characters are considerably less alive than the technology that en cases them. Even at an incredible 900 rivet-popping feet beneath the Atlantic, there is the uneasy feeling of bobbing rudderless on the surface...
When special effects don't interrupt and he doesn't have to wrestle our attention from the stagehands as they clear up the debris from the previous scene, Robert Larsen can demonstrate his ability, Peer, based on a folk hero, is an yarn-spinner and boaster, and Larsen is an excellent story-teller. From the opening scene, with Peer's fib of riding astride a reindeer-buck. Larsen reveals astounding acrobatic ability, vocal control, and stage presence, lending greater weight to Ibsen's lyrical verse. His versatility becomes apparent as his mood and expression age with Peer, who bears...
Homebodies is plotted out and done up with competence, so it does not look like the usual sleazy horror flick. For a yarn like this to work at all, though, the elfin imagination of a John Collier or Roald Dahl is indispensable. The authors and director of Homebodies have no such...
...State. The council is a satiric conceit; it is also a social prophecy that antedates Kafka's The Trial by 15 years and the CIA by two generations. Syme's story rings with the sonorities of the Book of Job. It is also a splendid detective yarn...
...mechanical objects, not actors, are the real farceurs. He mounts elaborate scenes of amuck earthmovers and bizarre automobile chases along the L.A. freeway. But these devices quickly give way to the intractable mechanics of the plot-plan, get the money and split. If a novel approach to such a yarn exists, this exercise is not it. &183; Jay Cocks