Word: mawkishness
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...Fantasticks” distinguished itself in the strength of its performers. Not only did Jennifer L. Brown ’07 (Luisa) and Arlo D. Hill ’08 (Matt), the two leads, boast rich, pure singing voices, but their acting also tempered the mawkish sincerity of the show’s script with a subtly ironic twist. Other actors who delivered scene-stealing performances included Baruch Y. Shemtov ’09 and Benjamin K. Glaser ’09 as Hucklebee and Mortimer, respectively. The small-framed, raspy-voiced Shemtov has played improbable roles before...
...Situation”—self-proclaimed as the first feature film to focus on the war—exert most of their energy explaining themselves. As they try to prove that they understand the complexities of Iraq and care about the continuing tragedy, mawkish sentimentality and ham-fisted didacticism join forces to drain the project of all dramatic coherence. After curfew in Samarra, in Iraq’s volatile Sunni triangle, two Iraqi teenagers approach an American checkpoint. Unarmed and submissive, the teenagers reflexively put up their hands—and the Americans respond by throwing the both...
...reprimand, a taunt or an inspiration. Historian, hunter, soldier, essayist, cowboy, megalomaniac - he was bigger than life, in the way that all politicians hope to be. Richard Nixon, a president whose insecurities and intimations of unworthiness reached pathological levels, invoked TR throughout his presidency, right up to the mawkish speech he gave as he left the White House two steps ahead of the sheriff. For politicians of the soft and pampered boomer generation - "well-meaning little men," as TR once called the type, "with receding chins and small feet" - TR is a perfect reproof, and they respond by embracing...
Nonetheless, the cheap laughs and mawkish subplots ultimately cause the film to collapse, as it loses the specificity that could have created a genuine and moving movie...
Every local station with a hostage family in the area got into the act, and the most touching or most mawkish family response made it to the networks. George Will complained about the "pornography of grief" in hostage-family coverage, and on a talk show he asked Secretary of State George Shultz whether "we are so paralyzed by 40 lives" that our foreign policy was jeopardized. Some word-processor warriors were quite ready to sacrifice the hostages in their eagerness for "bold" retaliatory action, usually unspecified. C.D. Jackson, who served on General Eisenhower's wartime staff, used to call such...