Word: familiar
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Hoffman carefully modulates his five scenes, using familiar but effective gestures: the shy grin, the hunch of the shoulders, the sudden stare, the deliberate monotonous thud to denote anger. His performance, anything but a star turn, is intelligent, confident and touching. Hoffman brings to mind his ingratiating Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman or, even more strongly, his film work in Straw Dogs as a quiet man driven beyond endurance into mayhem. The show never stints on the virulent anti-Semitism of Shakespeare's world, although Hall employs subtle staging and lighting cues to mollify modern spectators' disquiet...
This is a Keaton familiar from earlier comedies like Beetlejuice. He gets to deliver only a few amusing lines--notably in a scene with Vale and newspaper reporter Alexander Knox (Robert Wohl)--but he delivers them well. And Keaton has a beautifully expressive face; he's fun to watch when the script supports him. Sadly, however, it seldom does...
...rightward shift on civil rights began to quicken in January, when the Justices ruled 6 to 3 that affirmative-action programs may be approved only after the strictest judicial scrutiny. The pattern became clearer two weeks ago when, by the now familiar 5-to-4 vote, the court gave large companies accused of discrimination a crucial procedural win. The Justices held that, contrary to previous doctrine, it is employees who must prove that imbalances in the racial makeup of their employer's work force result from practices that have no valid business justification. That ruling provoked a biting dissent from...
...from the Chinese government. It was Wuer who, though wilting from hunger, sat across from Li Peng and chastised him for arriving late to the meeting accorded the protesters. "He talked with Li Peng as an equal," said a Beijing intellectual. His denim jacket and shaggy hair became a familiar sight in Tiananmen, where the charismatic Wuer barked directives from a bullhorn and bantered with demonstrators and journalists alike. Even after other student leaders voted him off the standing committee organizing the protests, in part for advising his fellow strikers to abandon the square the day after martial...
...rapid succession, to the films underlying those last two presold titles and by the prospect of The Karate Kid III, Lethal Weapon II, Nightmare on Elm Street V and, heaven forfend, Friday the 13th VIII. Not to mention James Bond umpty-ump. The basic criticism of sequels is as familiar as it is correct: they represent the triumph of commercial caution over creative daring...