Word: overwhelm
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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ROCKY IV contains few elements of a traditional film. Instead of a movie, Stallone has created a visual and aural experience design to bombast and overwhelm the viewer's senses. All the blows have been amplified and run through some electronic thingamajig to produce a sound much akin to a pack of wolves attacking a square mile of sheet metal. Clips from the earlier three movies fly past with the incredible rapidity of a flurry of Marvin Hagler haymakers to the pounding strains of "Burning Heart" by Survivor. The audience has to weather flashing lights, smoke, flags, flying drops...
...ship, the sense of panic increased as the gunmen became more desperate. Neither crew nor passengers seem to have considered trying to overwhelm the terrorists; they were too well armed and too erratic, and besides, very few people realized that there were only four gunmen on board. "From the way they were behaving," a diplomat who visited the ship later observed, "it seemed more likely that there were 20 hijackers rather than four...
...wowed the TV world with big weekly budgets and top-drawer directors. But TV's newest mogul is keeping his series under tight wraps to heighten the suspense until its Sept. 29 premiere, leaving both critics and viewers to wonder whether its giant-size ambitions will enhance, or merely overwhelm, the small screen. Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which will follow Spielberg's show on Sunday nights, will consist largely of remakes of old Hitchcock episodes. That ploy worked surprisingly well in a TV movie last spring that spawned the series, but it could grow tiresome as the nostalgia wears...
...Africa's largest country to democracy after a transitional period of a year? How, above all, would the soft-spoken and cautious Suwar al Dahab manage to tackle the crush of problems that had buried even Africa's most hardened survivor? Said one Western diplomat: "All the factors that overwhelmed Nimeiri--unrest in the south, a deteriorating economy, drought and a flood of refugees--may well overwhelm his successors...
...separated warheads are vastly more difficult to find and distinguish from decoys. On re-entry, the decoys burn up, and only the warheads continue to plunge through the atmosphere. But if there are, say, 5,000 left out of an original launch of 10,000, they could easily overwhelm any conceivable "terminal" defense. Besides, by then it might be too late to prevent terrible damage. Warheads can be set to detonate if struck by interceptor rockets or projectiles, and though hardened missile silos are almost impervious to anything except a direct hit, nuclear explosions even in the upper atmosphere...