(1) While the Spielberg of popular myth is Mr Nice Guy, Lean was known as an obsessive, cantankerous tyrant who didn't much like actors and was only truly happy locked away in the editing suite.
(2) He owed his late-flourishing film career to Branagh, appearing in a string of his movies: as Bardolph in Henry V (1989), Leonato in Much Ado About Nothing (1993), the old blind man in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), a cantankerous old thespian in A Midwinter's Tale (1995), Polonius in Hamlet (1996) and Sir Nathaniel in the musical Love's Labour's Lost (2000).
(3) Ken could be magnificently cantankerous, but he was generous to a fault and loved nothing more than to inspire young film-makers.
(4) Her mother the Duchess of Kent had wanted to call her Georgiana Charlotte Augusta Alexandrina Victoria, but was overruled by a cantankerous Prince Regent, the future George IV, who dictated during the ceremony that she be called Alexandrina Victoria instead in tribute to the Russian Tsar Alexander I.
(5) In my cosseted complacency, I had mistakenly believed that modern Scotland was a good place to practise the curious rituals of my cantankerous, old Catholic faith.
(6) And what a face it is: that gnarled, acne-pocked, gin-blossomed lunar landscape of ornery venom and intermittent soulfulness, out of which comes that cantankerous Texan bark.
(7) The ITV bosshas become more and more cantankerous in his dealings with the media over the past few months as the broadcaster has struggled in the advertising recession and then seen its search for a chief executive or chairman to replace him hit by a series of setbacks.
(8) I had spent my life wondering if I would ever find the elderly Jewish actor capable of "doing" the cantankerous, passionate, funny old characters of my early life.
(9) No sudden appearances from David Starkey, looming out of the historical gloaming like the ghost of a cantankerous 1930s dinner lady.
(10) He was called cantankerous, which he probably took as a badge of honour.
(11) Signature video The first Unnecessary Otter skit, introducing us to Hayes playing a sweet children's TV presenter with the aforementioned cantankerous Scottish sidekick.
(12) In 1948, the cantankerous but influential scholar FR Leavis crowned Austen mother of his great tradition of the English novel.
(13) Think of him as a cantankerous old kung-fu master whose tough love hides a deep-seated desire for his students to prosper.
(14) Like Charles Dickens, Twain achieved immense success with his first book, became his nation's most famous and best-loved author, and has remained a national treasure ever since – America's most archetypal writer, an instantly recognisable, white-haired, white-suited, folksy, cantankerous icon.
(15) In conversation, he exudes a mix of warmth and cantankerousness, idealism about humanity's potential and a weariness with the modern world – at least outside the eminently sensible shire in which he lives.
(16) Godard is the great, implacably cantankerous and difficult warrior from the new wave generation, one that still makes its mark at Cannes.
(17) The more cantankerous Senator Ted Cruz called it “Obamacare for the internet”.
(18) He’s cantankerous and eccentric but you don’t get to make a difference if you are a shrinking violet.
(19) Emerging from the gloom is Robin Griffin (Elisabeth Moss, excellent), a preoccupied, sensitive Sydney detective returning to her hometown to nurse her cantankerous mother, only to find herself drawn into an investigation into the abuse of a pregnant 12-year-old girl.
(20) What some saw as an eccentric masterpiece, others dismissed as an eccentric mess – a wilfully obscure meditation on the nature of globalisation from a cantankerous old genius who took a perverse delight in bamboozling his audience.
Fractious
Definition:
(a.) Apt to break out into a passion; apt to scold; cross; snappish; ugly; unruly; as, a fractious man; a fractious horse.
Example Sentences:
(1) Instead of healing the nation after a fractious referendum he inflamed the situation.
(2) Euromaidan was a delayed echo of the social unrest wave , driven by the country's economic failure; it collided with a diplomatic situation that was already fractious over Syria.
(3) The sale of Vodafone's 45% stake in its US joint venture to its partner Verizon Communications would end 13 years of an often fractious shared ownership.
(4) In a sign of how coalition relations will remain fractious until the election in May 2015, the deputy prime minister said: "You've got a Conservative party now who are driven, it seems to me, by two very clear ideological impulses.
(5) It takes a rare company to unite the rest of the fractious British media industry.
(6) Which is that when we – my dad driving, my mum alongside, a 16- or 17-year-old fractious me in the backseat, my younger sister and brother – headed down a remote country road, I can’t remember what language the road sign saying DO NOT ENTER was actually in.
(7) However, following later abortions at greater than 20 weeks, the rare but catastrophic occurrence of live births can lead to fractious controversy over neonatal management.
(8) The two latter kingdoms were reunited in the century that followed – but the presence of a third dynasty suggests that their fractious relationship and subsequent amalgamation may have been more complex than initially thought.
(9) Livingstone, the former London mayor, whose fractious relationship with the Standard reached a low point with his Nazi jibe at Jewish reporter Oliver Finegold , remains defiantly unapologetic about the incident and holds a healthy hatred of the title, now majority-owned by Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev.
(10) We don’t want to expend too much energy in training because of the humidity but we stay here, we play, and then go back to Manchester for two more weeks of preparation before the first official game.” Mourinho and Guardiola brushed off the question of whether they would shake hands beforehand because of the fractious nature of their rivalry when formerly in charge of Real Madrid and Barcelona respectively.
(11) Still, while she may be blocked from the top job, the ruling, military-backed Union Solidarity and Development party is facing increasing fractiousness within its ranks.
(12) But read between the lines of this truncated character sketch and you also get a glimpse of what has been a sometimes fractious career.
(13) Multiple fractious arguments about the internet dominate headlines these days, but ultimately they are all battles in a single war.
(14) After the creed and some Benjamin Britten, and a blessing and a long round of applause, the man charged with holding together the fractious global Anglican communion as it struggles with the vexed issues of women bishops and same-sex marriage processed out of the cathedral and into the bitterly cold spring afternoon.
(15) The left's Monsieur Ordinary will now be called upon to demonstrate extraordinary leadership skills: first to reunite his party, then, in a more problematic and pressing task, to reunite the fractious French left, before launching his presidential campaign.
(16) This had been awkward, a fractious occasion which saw players from both sides dismissed before the interval, but it ended up feeling like a show of strength played out largely to a tempo Chelsea imposed.
(17) Other speakers nervously approached applause lines not knowing whether they would be booed or cheered by the fractious crowd.
(18) Recent collaboration between traditionally fractious teaching unions to oppose cuts to the school rebuilding programme gained more traction than the usual grumbles about pay because it spoke to parents as well as professionals.
(19) The entry into the race of the MP for Wallasey, Angela Eagle, puts Merseyside at the centre of what is shaping up to be one of the most fractious Labour contests since the days of Militant in the 1980s.
(20) Lygo, who had a fractious relationship with Duncan, has been at Channel 4 this time around since 2003, rejoining after a two-year stint at Channel Five.