Word: automatons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...library. But the Dan Quayle at the debate was a different person: a grim, wooden, frightened fellow who had stayed up late memorizing answers for the big test. So nervous were Bush's handlers that they denied Quayle any chance to be spontaneous, transforming him instead into an automaton searching for prepackaged answers that he could drone out safely...
...other way around. Perhaps Wills' most important insight into America's 40th President can be found in his discussion of Reagan's days as a sports announcer. Reagan's detractors, who dismiss the president as "just an actor" and view him as no more than a tele-prompted automaton, have not looked back far enough into his past. If they did, they would better understand the man and his appeal...
...think your boss is inhuman? A real automaton who never lets up, never forgets the slightest error you make? Then just wait until a computer takes over as manager...
...blandness has its advantages. Norris is seldom off-putting. In Code of Silence, an exceptionally deft movie of its kind, Director Andy Davis has provided a perfect schematic vehicle: a righteous, nice-looking automaton is caught in a lot of crossfire. There are rotten Italian gangsters, rotten Colombian gangsters and rotten fellow police officers. As Sergeant Eddie Cusak, Norris refuses to go along with the cover-up of a killing by a scruffy underling (Ralph Foody) and tries to mediate a gang war. He may be good, but he has no family and no girlfriend, and gets uncomfortable...
...women is the play's mainspring. Ivey bubbles with crude gaiety in her effort to be liked. Harris finds pathetic dignity in an emotional loss that makes her physically ill. The supporting cast is also adept, notably George N. Martin as Harris' stolid, stubborn husband; only McGoohan's automaton-like condescension seems unreal. Director Clifford Williams has sensitively evoked the rhythms of the play, which alternates between naturalistic bursts of action and spotlighted soliloquies. Much of the story is told after the fact, in an elegiac, ruminative tone, reminiscent of $ recent work by Tom Stoppard and Simon Gray. The epilogue...