Word: spectral
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Melville injects these environs with a superstitious aura. Frequently, it is explicit--a fake phantom in "I Do Not Take Take Messages from Dead People," or the black magic of an obeah man in "The Conversion of Millicent Vernon." More often, she only hints at spectral shadows--voodoo, zombies and the occult in general--to supply that uniquely West Indian flavor...
...better used the drama of his 72 hours in the hands of the secret police to advance his standing among a people disgusted with his halfhearted economic reforms and political vacillation. He could have gone out to thank the Muscovites who had struggled for him as they defied the spectral Stalinists who were trying to bring back the past. He could have publicly embraced his former foe, Boris Yeltsin, and accepted with a flourish the sudden, almost unlimited opportunity to create a new society atop the wreckage of the Soviet system...
What gives Ghost its spooky staying power? The Paramount film will pass Disney's Pretty Woman this week to become the biggest box-office draw of the year, grossing almost $180 million since July. The sleeper hit, which tells the story of a murdered young Manhattanite who maintains a spectral presence on earth to protect his wife, has marketing experts trying to figure out its success. One theory is that the film's spiritual message prompts moviegoers to see it over and over with cultlike devotion. Paramount has taken out classified notices in newspapers saying, "If you have seen Ghost...
...celluloid. His early career traced a paradigmatic arc of hotshot movie eminence, from a $20,000 underground classic (Eraserhead in 1977) to a $5 million Oscar nominee (The Elephant Man in 1980) to a $50 million sci-fi dud (Dune in 1984). Each film had segments of bafflement and spectral beauty. But Hollywood, looking at the escalating price tags and plummeting ticket sales, wrote the director off. So Lynch made Blue Velvet (1986), a magnificent revenge drama -- his revenge on fettered movie conventions -- about small-town life and lust, drugs and death. Twin Peaks, you could say, is only...
Friday the 13th's worst sin is an obsession with clunky, overexplanatory dialogue laying out the supernatural ground rules ("Demons can only rise or return on a full moon -- that's why the spectral energy is gathering ^ . . ."). But the show delivers a stronger dose of pure horror than anything else on TV. In the season's two-hour premiere episode, Lucifer tried to take over a convent in France. Before the overstuffed plot spun out of control, there were some startling set pieces: a possessed nun literally climbing the walls and patients in a mental ward going wild and murdering...