Word: preciously
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...human decline takes such a helter-skelter course, or even what causes aging itself. But it is not for lack of trying. In recent years, the new science of gerontology (the study of aging) has expended prodigious efforts to locate life's master clock and perhaps use that precious knowledge to slow it or even stop it. One locale for the clock (if there is indeed only one) may be within the smallest unit of life, the cell. Growing normal embryonic cells of various species in a test tube, Biologist Leonard Hayflick has made an astonishing finding: they...
...injury is such a threat, some would ask, why play? Why risk serious injury? Why sit on the bench as Tim did for years for but a few precious minutes on the field? Why suffer, as many do, through years of practice, without playing even the few minutes that...
...innards into the camera and lets the script slide. This would-be saga abouty three losers who flee the slums of Berlin for the promise of America delivers some startling imagery all right, but the story's fascination with the daily trampling of a society's outcasts serves precious little creative purpose. Witnessing the humiliation and coldness meted out to whores and alcoholics does not do your head much good, and the gratuitous--and clumsy--satire of the Midwest is guaranteed to turn you off on Herzog's trek through our social mire...
...just the distortion of the familiar, or the Day-of-Judgment chaos of a world where the center cannot hold that is so compelling. What is original is the power of the artist to evoke one's nostalgia. Nostalgia is a concept often burdened with "precious" shades of meaning. Andrew Sarris once described "a vague nostalgia for ancient aesthetic battles only dimly defined through the mists of memory." A case in point. However, Chagall's is a nostalgia that, while occasionally self-conscious (as in the slightly-too-charming. "L'Homme Au Parapluie," a line sketch of a clown leaning...
...maniacal head coach who has to have things his way. Things do not go well, alas. The coach doesn't like his style of play and waxes antagonistic, finally having him beaten on the court, ostensibly to teach him a lesson. Finally, he is asked to renounce his precious athletic scholarship; when he refuses, the fun starts in earnest. This part of the film, at least, is fairly realistic. Big-time college sports are really professional sports in the guise of amateur athletics, and survival is dependent on both talent and an ability to accept a system that reduces athletes...