(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.
Pugnacious
Definition:
(a.) Disposed to fight; inclined to fighting; quarrelsome; fighting.
Example Sentences:
(1) He even has a soft spot for the Cockney Rejects, pugnacious purveyors of football singalongs.
(2) He caught sight of Marine Le Pen on a TV politics show in 2007, inveighing against the European Union in the pugnacious style she honed as a lawyer, warning the government to “stop taking the people for fools”.
(3) Nel, nicknamed "the pitbull", is diminutive and pugnacious and a sharp contrast to the tall, silver-haired, urbane Roux.
(4) The Guardian has found that Trump’s pugnacious campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski , has more experience in this field than was previously known, having resorted to litigation in his only election as a candidate himself.
(5) It appeared to be designed as a permanent – and pugnacious – installation, with none of the usual ropes and pulleys.
(6) I wouldn’t have gone in.” National security also sparked the standout clash of the night, when Paul, the libertarian who did most in the Senate to end the bulk collection of phone records in the wake of the disclosures from the whistleblower Edward Snowden , collided with Chris Christie, the pugnacious New Jersey governor.
(7) On Friday morning, Rahm Emanuel, the brilliantly pugnacious mayor of Chicago, and former White House chief of staff, told me that, as the grandson of a migrant, he would not assist Trump’s attempts to entrap undocumented children, but instead continue to support them through his community college programme.
(8) The pugnacious Schulberg rejected this and broke with party discipline, publishing What Makes Sammy Run?
(9) McBride, a football-loving and pugnacious former Treasury civil servant drawn into Brown's inner circle, paid yesterday with his career.
(10) "Blowing up the Red Road eyesores is a typically pugnacious Glaswegian way of celebrating the Games.
(11) Getting out of the third round proved as tough as he suspected for Dimitrov, who needed three hours and 28 minutes to subdue the pugnacious crowd favourite Marcos Baghdatis in five competitive sets in the early-afternoon heat.
(12) Montgomerie, who now edits the Times comment section, had suggested that Gove was excessively "pugnacious and confrontational" in his dealings with the teaching profession.
(13) Despite Blanco’s refusal, Ramirez announced he was imposing state command over Cuernavaca’s police, and he suggested dark forces were influencing the pugnacious former athlete, who has never before held public office.
(14) Rumpole of the Bailey, the pugnacious barrister created by John Mortimer, of course constantly resisted promotion to the bench.
(15) He certainly demonstrates a similar steely resolve, pugnaciousness and disdain for consensus politics that was the hallmark of the Iron Lady.
(16) The pugnacious Bannon, a former head of the rightwing Bretibart News who has been dubbed “Trump’s Rasputin”, spoke as if on permanent war footing.
(17) • China's "newly pugnacious" foreign policy is "losing friends worldwide", the US ambassador to Beijing argued in a cable .
(18) Chris Christie , the pugnacious governor of New Jersey who staked his 2016 presidential campaign on a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, has suspended his candidacy after winning less than 10% of the vote on Tuesday, a campaign staffer confirmed to the Guardian.
(19) Erdoğan said voters had opted for stability, but in characteristically pugnacious form in Istanbul, he also attacked the global media and its criticism of him.
(20) As charming and as pugnacious as ever, he survived what might have been disgrace and was certainly unpopularity as an active, cheerful and still optimistic man.