Word: claptrap
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...subjugation of ten thousand years of intellectual and spiritual development by the mindless necessities of a hundred yards of football sod. One of the most powerful arguments against the infinite perfectability and for the original sin of man is the steady accumulation of astoundingly vulgar pieces of brassy claptrap and woolly woodwind shrieks which feed the voracious football band. In the face of this surging ocean of treacle stand a handful of superb works for wind, three of which--Stravinsky's L'Histoire du Soldat and Octet, and Gustav Holst's Hammer-smith: Prelude and Scherzo--were performed...
History has tended to side with Byron. Nonetheless, buried beneath West's studied claptrap lurks considerable native talent. This gift shines forth in an exhibit of 36 rarely seen drawings, many of them owned until recently by descendants of the painter in England, now at Manhattan's Bernard Black Gallery. Since the drawings are mostly landscapes or sketches for larger compositions, the gallery placed them, wherever possible, next to a photocopy of the finished work. The demonstration is plain: as West's ideas progressed from initial draft to finished sketch to final oil, faces froze, bodies puffed...
SMASHING TIME. Lynn Redgrave and Rita Tushingham participate in this romp à la mod, which has too much bashing to be smashing, as it substitutes claptrap slapstick for the once refined art of British comedy...
...desperadoes who cut a staccato swath from Iowa to Texas and were ambushed and shot down near Arcadia La., on May 23, 1934. But Producer Beatty and Director Arthur Penn have elected to tell their tale of bullets and blood in a strange and purposeless mingling of fact and claptrap that teeters uneasily on the brink of burlesque. Like Bonnie and Clyde themselves, the film rides off'in all directions and ends up full of holes...
Menotti says of the unusual collaboration: "We both wanted simplicity, universality and timelessness, eliminating all the unnecessary claptrap." In the flexible, open spaces, Menotti deployed his accomplished cast of American and Italian singers in fluid lines and ghostly dances, spelling out his concept that "the whole opera is based on the characters' search for each other." The designs simplified rather than complicated his problems of staging. Moore's sets "do not swamp the opera but bring out its tragedy and symbolism," Menotti says. "His sculptures are passionate and compassionate: they seem to be listening to Mozart...