The little book had big pretensions, which were not always appreciated by writers or even grammarians.
They have no great pretensions.
But I've never been a fan of TV drama with big-screen pretensions: whatever the context, characters doing nothing and staring into the middle distance are, for me, a big wind-up.
Except perhaps for Mark Twain, no other American writer has registered with such precision the humor — and the pathos — of false sophistication and the vital banality of big-city pretension.
Opening ceremonies, traditionally big on pretension and po-faced, usually require a little mickey-taking to be endured.
But Bale is big on lack of pretension - and bigger on being seen to be lacking pretension.
Last year Duke Energy, another big utility with green pretensions, raised the projected cost of two coal-fired plants from $2 billion to $3 billion.Lastly, new regulations could change the economics of coal by putting a price on carbon emissions.
Almost any soulful grit was polished away; disco had big production budgets and bourgeois pretensions to match.
Under the Socialist government of Felipé González, he felt, Spain had too often passively followed a line determined by France and Germany.Mr Aznar made little secret of his contempt for the ossified economies and leadership pretensions of the big two.
But where Independence Day draws from its pop culture sources in a manner that commemorates movies as escapist, uplifting utopian visions, Mars Attacks! celebrates its references for their inherent trashiness, their outsider status and ephemeral nature, and as an alternative to the somber high-art pretensions of the big-budget blockbuster.
One of the great US fan rituals is the constant anointing of the next big thing — usually accompanied by disgust for the pretensions of the last would-be-next-big-thing.
