A dark thriller about minimum wage asylum seekers in London, Dirty Pretty Things was regarded by many as an admirably bleak opening night film for the festival.
I prefer a bit more asperity in the bleak opening Nocturne.
"Nothing here is on a par with that film's astoundingly bleak opening section, but this doesn't lessen the charm and ingenuity of Bolt".
MacLeish's essay, despite its bleak opening, had ultimately been optimistic: "We not only have a national purpose," he wrote, "we have a national purpose of such aspiration, such potentiality, such power of hope that we refer to it — or used to — as the American Dream".
In contrast to the bleak opening, even the most sugary coral pink frock, the most gift-wrapped of beribboned dresses, seemed welcome.
"I don't want to clean up after two kids," Cindy says in the movie's bleak opening scene.
Tuesday was shaping up to be another rocky session, but stocks trimmed their losses at the opening bell, despite a bleak forecast from manufacturing giant Caterpillar.
The opening shot is a bleak sidewalk in the middle of Bucharest, with honking cars and noisy trams going by, as a woman struggles with a suitcase.
Wall Street stumbled at the opening bell Tuesday as traders dumped shares in anticipation of a bleak reading on the U.S. housing market, and the doomsayers were not disappointed.
After a breathtaking opening sequence of pearl divers in the watery depths, the curtain rises on a bleak coastal village, where a weather-beaten billboard — advertising jewelry with the tagline "Inspiration from the Deep" — looms over tin-and-cardboard huts.
