Lauda, who calculates the risk in everything, has a less impulsive courtship of Marlene (Alexandra Maria Lara), though it does start with one of the film's most pleasing scenes, a hitchhiking episode that offers a reverse twist on the celebrated Clark Gable/Claudette Colbert moment in "It Happened One Night".
Looked at charitably, in light of the pleasure it can give its users, the old-fashioned cat tree can be seen as a testament to the power of design: The way a single object can transform a pleasing home into a scene of fusty surrender, and in doing so, suggest all that a home will sacrifice for its beloved inhabitants.
Her wry delivery and understated warmth are a pleasing combination; the musical's opening scene, in which Ms. Graff's Meg laments the half-yearly emotional absence of her baseball-crazed husband, gets the show off to a cozy start.
The movie tries to have it both ways, both condemning the Crusades and yet offering crowd-pleasing scenes of Robin shooting (with a bow-and-arrow, of course) his way through Muslim soldiers.
This past winter, however, the playwright Douglas Carter Beane ("The Little Dog Laughed") rewrote virtually the entire book for the musical's Broadway bow, punching up the comedy and bringing the crowd-pleasing scenes of singing nuns into sharper and quicker focus.
Without it, Deford would be introducing himself with a straightforward, rhythmically pleasing, conversational, scene-setting declaration.
As if to prove her point, she then came on to Peggy, leading to a fun scene in which a pleased-with-herself Peggy and Stan revealed that they were both the subject of her advances.
Desk-bound in Manhattan these days, I'm left simply reading about the summer racing season, so I was delighted when I recently came across "Make Way for the Horse, Please," a Sporting Scene piece by Roger Angell from 1964.
The description of a beautiful scene pleases us, according to this proposal, both for the beauty of the scene and for "the aptness of the description to excite its image" (Addison and Steele 1879, no 418).
While viewing them I had another epiphany when I connected the dots between Facebook and a recent scene (please watch it below) from "The Wheel" episode of Mad Men.
Ms. Kopple was particularly pleased with a scene she shot of Ms. Alonso talking to Fidel Castro at the festival's opening.
