Word: spectral
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...forces at work aren't as powerful, and enchantment can be elusive. It could be a letdown, for instance, to learn that Ishmael, rescued by the Rachel, returns to New Bedford and starts a seafood restaurant called The White Whale, only to be shut down by a spectral, one-legged inspector from the board of health...
...fires a gun or slashes a victim to slivers in The Wings of the Dove, the sexy, spectral new film from Henry James' novel. But mortal predators are at work, and their weapons are smiles, thin and precise as stilettos. The smile of smarmy Lord Mark (Alex Jennings) says, "He's boring" or "Her money is too new" or, late at night when he's drunk too much, "You'll do." His friend Maude (Charlotte Rampling) has a practiced irony in her smile; life has taught her to walk gracefully among land mines and, en route, to plant...
Unfortunately, melodies have taken a back seat on Come To Daddy. Fans of the dark, spectral soundscapes on James's masterly Selected Ambient Works Volume II will lament the lack of comparable melodic beauty. Slower tracks such as "Flim" don't stand up as well on repeat listens, although they serve as welcome breaks between the aural roar of the louder songs...
...problematic of all, naturally, are the paintings--currently on view at New York City's Museum of Modern Art--that were done in the '80s, after his mind was completely gone and he had to rely on assistants to do everything but move his arm across the canvas. These spectral, vacuous confections of ribbony paint are among the saddest things ever made by a once major artist...
...slice of hell, in fact, full of endless chatter, where all the clients' heads are clocks whose hands have stopped for eternity at 10 p.m.--has its affinities to Hopper's Nighthawks. Even the silver G.I.s in Kienholz's great antimilitarist piece, The Portable War Memorial, 1968, have a spectral Hopperish sadness as they raise the Iwo Jima flag on a patio table...