(n.) Formerly, a kind of drama having a musical accompaniment to intensify the effect of certain scenes. Now, a drama abounding in romantic sentiment and agonizing situations, with a musical accompaniment only in parts which are especially thrilling or pathetic. In opera, a passage in which the orchestra plays a somewhat descriptive accompaniment, while the actor speaks; as, the melodrama in the gravedigging scene of Beethoven's "Fidelio".
Example Sentences:
(1) Reith, “his dour handsome face scarred like that of a villain in a melodrama”, was “a strange shepherd for such a mixed, bohemian flock … he had under his aegis a bevy of ex-soldiers, ex-actors, ex-adventurers which … even a Dartmoor prison governor might have had difficulty in controlling”.
(2) Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye, said Mr Carman would be remembered for turning "the courtroom into melodrama".
(3) Before the digital age, they created their own technology to make sound montages, taking ironic liberties with pastiche and parody, as in "Sugar-cane fields forever", or the exaggerated Latin melodrama of El Justiciero (The Avenger) They were influenced by concrete poetry and avant-garde music.
(4) Basing the film on Walter Lord's meticulously researched book (adapted by Ambler), Baker opted for a documentary approach that focused on the human interest without recourse to melodrama, making it both moving and exciting.
(5) While on television the US capital is fascinated by a glamorous, distorting mirror of itself: The West Wing (liberal fantasy), House of Cards (the devil as president) and Scandal (preposterous melodrama).
(6) Dallas had buckets of money, on and off screen, and buckets of melodrama.
(7) It's just that he gets ultra-stressed by things that many of us choose to ignore, and melodrama can ensue.
(8) Transposing the Brothers Grimm to 1920s Spain, he doffs his montera not only to European silent cinema of the period, but to bullfighting and flamenco, with an atmospheric Gothic melodrama that has lashings of humour – mostly provided by Maribel Verdú as the social-climbing evil stepmother with a penchant for S&M – bags of invention, and an expressive, flamenco-inflected score by Alfonso de Vilallonga.
(9) His other forte was as a 1950s director of widescreen colour melodramas often adapted from the fatter, racier bestsellers of the postwar paperback revolution, many of which have developed separate cults of their own.
(10) It took two weeks for him to address the issue publicly, while his wife Patience was accused of melodrama smacking of insincerity when she met mothers of the kidnapped girls.
(11) For many, France's elimination from the tournament after six days of melodrama in which obscenities were thrown, players went on strike and a coach walked out, came as something of a relief.
(12) A h, the many Proustian pleasures to be derived from a renewed acquaintance with Roy Ward Baker 's 1958 Titanic melodrama A Night To Remember ... Last seen by me on some wintry Sunday afternoon in the prepubescent early 1970s, probably in the same post-prandial time-slot where I first encountered The Cockleshell Heroes, Carve Her Name With Pride and The Colditz Story – the dull roar of British postwar self-congratulation on film.
(13) It was a difficult production – the director wanted it to be a slightly Edwardian melodrama and we couldn't get our heads around the concept.
(14) Despite a testament as harrowing as his, and for all its meticulous refusal of melodrama, the Holocaust has become subject to sneering scepticism – now outright denial, now the slower drip of devaluation and diminishment.
(15) For the life of me I cannot understand why it is somehow correct for all of your privacy to be invaded for a commercial purpose and not allow me to do it to save your life.” Irvine added: “Is that dramatic enough?” The Victorian Labor senator Jacinta Collins said: “It’s an amusing defence because I think you’ll find most people are concerned about the other also.” Ludlam said: “I think it’s probably heading towards melodrama rather than just drama.” 'Not seeking a big brother arrangement' During the Senate hearing Irvine also laid out the case for a mandatory data retention scheme forcing telecommunications providers to store customer data for two years.
(16) Twenty-five years ago, soap operas were delivery systems for melodrama, cliffhangers, women's issues, comedy and social critique, and, best of all, white-knuckle rides on the narrative express.
(17) The best hour records lack melodrama, but are marked instead by a constantly building sense of history in the making as the raw statistics make it obvious what is coming.
(18) McDowell, a film-maker in his own right, collaborated with Kuchar on several movies, as an actor in Siamese Twin Pinheads (1972), The Sunshine Sisters (1972) and The Devil's Cleavage (1975), a 130-minute recreation of 1940s and 50s black-and-white melodramas.
(19) But disillusionment is, though often painful – and Beware of Pity has moments of high melodrama that have the power to make one put one's free hand over one's mouth as one reads – a very necessary process, and the stripping away of illusions was, after all, one of the abiding aims of the Freudian project.
(20) They approached the cold war as melodrama and McCarthyism by way of allegory.
Pantomime
Definition:
(n.) A universal mimic; an actor who assumes many parts; also, any actor.
(n.) One who acts his part by gesticulation or dumb show only, without speaking; a pantomimist.
(n.) A dramatic representation by actors who use only dumb show; hence, dumb show, generally.
(n.) A dramatic and spectacular entertainment of which dumb acting as well as burlesque dialogue, music, and dancing by Clown, Harlequin, etc., are features.
(a.) Representing only in mute actions; pantomimic; as, a pantomime dance.
Example Sentences:
(1) Facebook Twitter Pinterest No shake: Donald Trump snubs Angela Merkel during photo op The piece of pantomime was in stark contrast to the visit of Theresa May in January.
(2) Defects in pantomime recognition always occurred in conjunction with reading defects of at least comparable severity, but reading defects sometimes occurred without comparable defects in pantomime recognition.
(3) Martin pantomimes the motion, holing up his fingers dramatically, and Malhotra chimes in with a “ding!” when the phantom bullet falls.
(4) Findings suggest that whether an aphasic with a language comprehension defect is impaired in sound recognition or pantomime recognition depends, at least in part, on individually variable predisposing factors.
(5) Even if that means poking the front half of the pantomime horse where it hurts.
(6) Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said: "It's pantomime season and the government joins in.
(7) Messages of two types (pantomime and emblem) were presented under four conditions (spoken message alone, spoken message repeated, gestured message alone, and spoken message plus redundant gesture).
(8) To investigate these issues, 24 psychotic children were required to represent absent objects (e.g., toothbrush) via pantomime after receiving verbal instructions or instructions accompanied by a model demonstrating the pantomime.
(9) And yet social care still finds itself very much the back half of the health-and-care pantomime horse.
(10) He called his pressure group founded to rid society of the evil of cake 'FUCKD and BOMBD' he described the effects of cake in lurid, pantomime terms that wouldn't have convinced a 14-year-old ingenue.
(11) While describing mimic and pantomimic aspects in depressive patients, the author points out how these features can often be found clearly reproduced in the paintings of artists.
(12) The pantomime came to an end and the cast departed Finally, in another plug for Guardians Of The Galaxy, Feige introduced a video of Chris Pratt and director James Gunn who accidentally on purpose revealed that a sequel has already received the green light and will open through Disney, as all Marvel films do, on 28 July 2017.
(13) Defects in sound recognition and pantomime recognition were found in association with a variety of lesion loci.
(14) We shouldn’t be passive onlookers to Trump’s pantomime presidency any longer.
(15) While the three language measures were strongly correlated with each other, auditory comprehension was the only one of them that was significantly and consistently related to the pantomime tests.
(16) Only Eurovision could offer up such a song: a plea for ethnic tolerance, cunningly disguised as an Abba track with the offcuts from a pantomime.
(17) Reed had said he would abstain because “it was a pantomime proposition and parliament at its most pointless”.
(18) This paper addresses the issue of the separability of disorders of sign language from disorders of gesture and pantomime.
(19) The BBC presenter confided to the Radio Times that he shares widespread public disdain for the "tawdry pretences" of modern politicians and the "green-bench pantomime" of Westminster politics.
(20) An earlier search, led by Crosby, became a pantomime as Tony Ball, the former Sky boss, made huge pay demands and the board was split over whether to meet them.