Word: peculiar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Great Britain is that peculiar country in Europe," Arthur Koestler once wrote, "where people drive on the left side of the road, measure in inches and yards, and hang people by the neck until dead." Hanging has indeed been a peculiarly British institution. During the 18th century, while capital punishment was being restricted elsewhere, the number of capital offenses under England's criminal law, which was commonly known as the "bloody code," increased fivefold, to more than 220. They included everything from associating with gypsies to stealing turnips...
...massacre of March 16, 1968, can be explained away as further proof, if any were needed, that war is indeed hell. Especially the Viet Nam war, with its peculiar frustrations, its bloody agonies, its nervous uncertainties about who and where the enemy really is. But to excuse My Lai on these grounds, or to argue that the enemy has done worse (as he has), is to beg a graver issue. The fact remains that this particular atrocity-a clear violation of the civilized values America claims to up hold-was apparently ordered by officers of the U.S. military and carried...
...drama and wretched theater," complained a New York Times critic after a 1931 performance of From the House of the Dead. Through years of such disasters,Janáček (pronounced Ya-na-chek) remained a proud, angry man who longed desperately for recognition and stubbornly believed that his peculiar brand of musicmaking would be vindicated. Now, four decades after his death, the often maligned composer is winning the recognition and admiration denied him during his life...
...didn't expect to achieve anything near that. Nevertheless, before every rehearsal we spend nearly an hour doing various exercises in order to free ourselves and give ourselves to each other. After much experimentation, we evolved our own peculiar brand of "energy transference," which is a difficult concept to describe and even more difficult to participate in correctly. The goal of the exercise is for the actor to strip away blocks-physical, mental, emotional-which hamper his ability to respond on impulse...
Many of the episodes-and actors -are charged with a peculiar magic that dilates space and annihilates time. Centuries collide; the imagined becomes surreal, as when Jean daydreams of the Pope's assassination-and the shot is clearly heard by a passerby. Or when a nun's self-sacrifice becomes actual crucifixion. But where he should use a No. 3 paintbrush, Buñuel too often employs a palette knife. What is intended as subtle Human Comedy becomes broadly laughable, as when Jesus and his disciples run through the woods in chromo-colored sequences, or when Mary miraculously...