Word: behavior
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...contest. Brown, on the other hand, may have lost some of the luster that enabled him to beat Carter in all three of the primaries in 1976 where he appeared on the ballot. His unconventionality has by now become rather conventional; he is expected to do the unexpected. Behavior that seemed refreshingly uninhibited at first now may strike people as overly opportunistic. Asserts Tom D'Alesandro III, the former mayor of Baltimore who supported Brown in 1976: "He was a mystery then-this unique young man from out of the West who came in on a whirlwind. People...
...occurred so far has been highly selective. Says Georgia State University Economist Donald Ratajczak, speaking about the status of retail sales: "The discount and the high quality lines are good; the in-between is dead. Top and bottom are where the action is." Translation: in marked contrast with their behavior during past economic slowdowns, people are not closing their wallets entirely but are scrambling for bargains, on the one hand, and, on the other, scooping up top quality, long-lasting goods at any price...
...major problem is that the adult characters are caricatures. Writer Judith Ross clearly wants to create the kind of people one finds in Woody Allen and Paul Mazursky films: well-intentioned, articulate neurotics whose comic behavior exposes their internal pain. Unfortunately, Ross has a tendency to sacrifice believability for broad gags. We are asked to accept, simply for farcical purposes, that Franny's otherwise bright parents (John Lithgow and Kathryn Walker) would pull an elaborate ruse to fool their child into thinking that their dead marriage is a happy one. Ross not only characterizes Jamie's father (Terry...
...high as surely as a performer in the more elevated arts needs it, and North Dallas Forty is shrewd to make this often neglected observation about athletes. Moreover, Nolte is very appealing as a man inescapably infected by the crudity of his team's raucous (and vividly rendered) behavior at work and play; he struggles to give Elliott an intelligence beyond the character's ability to articulate. The star is well supported by Mac Davis, as a smooth ole star quarterback who's learned to get ahead by going along, and by G.D. Spradlin as the head...
...desperate solution: he commissioned Journalist Michael Herr (Dispatches) to write a narration that attempts to fill in Willard's personality ex post facto on the sound track. That narration-alternately sensitive, psychopathic, literary, gung-ho and antiwar-is self-contradictory and often at odds with Willard's behavior. It does not establish the protagonist as a credible figure or begin to achieve Coppola's loftier goal of charting Willard's tailspin into psychological terror. Eventually, the voice-over commentary becomes a makeshift panacea for the film's many other defects: it hastily clarifies plot points...