Word: spellbound
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Glasnost comes to Soviet TV as unprecedented programs break taboos and touch raw nerves. The viewers are spellbound...
...industrial eruptions. Some periods are re-created with elaborate props: a looming female robot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, a railway car stocked with projector and films to recall the propaganda push of early Soviet cinema, a Salvador Dali collage with the probing eyes he designed for Hitchcock's Spellbound, and a couch inspired by Mae West's lips. Elsewhere, actors stroll about in character to fill in the historical blanks. In a room labeled "Cinema Goes to War," for example, "soldiers" roll about in trenches. Nearby is a majestic staircase canopied by MOMI's own high-camp Erecthyon...
...with Shaffer, redemption comes from the marvelous acting of Felicity Kendal as an intelligence agent painfully aware of her shortcomings as a mother, Nigel Hawthorne as a wise colleague and, above all, Roger Rees as the defector, who is also the secret father of Kendal's schoolboy son. The spellbound joy and agony on his face as he listens mutely on the telephone to the voice of the boy he can never claim as his, can scarcely even see, is the finest moment of performance in London. It makes this sere season well worth the trip...
...they don't. The widow of a giant slain by Jack shows up to exact revenge and drives everyone back into the woods (mystical and eerie in Tony Straiges' design, spellbound in Richard Nelson's storybook-colored lighting). The threat she poses has been likened by some critics to nuclear war or AIDS; the rampant selfishness that soon erupts in the face of trouble is, the producers admit, meant as a subtle protest against the self-congratulatory individualism of the Reagan era. But with or without allusive implications, the story jolts its passive characters -- and spectators -- into a world where...
...Mall. A great fanfare of trumpets arises from Westminster Abbey, and the stirring chords of Elgar resound through the vaulted nave. Then a hush. Through the breath-held stillness, two voices ring out. "I will." "I will." And then a great roar from outside, and rising above the spellbound listeners, beautiful and light, an aria by Mozart, and then another...