Oliver Herring characteristically opts for some form of tour de force that extracts an extravagant effect from a humble craft-oriented cause.
This seems an especially terrible punishment to inflict on "My Sweet Lord," which grafts the melody from the Chiffons' teeny-bopper classic "He's So Fine" onto a paean to the Hindu godhead -- a song, like everything on "All Things Must Pass," that scorns decorum in pursuit of extravagant effect.
His exuberant sense of humour led him to use extravagant Romantic effects and at the same time treat them ironically.
The opera is so loaded down with philosophical mumbo jumbo, extravagant staging effects and needlessly layered music, that it is sometimes hard to know what is happening.
Through tomorrow Popular cinema in India -- and, more recently, Indian television -- is famous for its extravagant visual effects and sex-and-violence plots.
The apartheid allegory District 9 was perhaps this year's cleverest film, proving that science fiction doesn't need extravagant special effects to make the grade.
Extravagant special effects.
Most of the performances were accompanied by extravagant special effects, including confetti, pyrotechnics, laser lights, and artificial fog and snow.
Some old stars have been coaxed out of retirment, most notably Yuan Qiu, who plays a chain-smoking, leather-lunged Landlady -- imagine a combination of Lucille Ball, Thelma Ritter and the Tasmanian Devil -- and who upstages even the most extravagant computer-generated special effects.
The effects of extravagant spending back when times were flush, state mandates and a national economy that has, until recently, been weak have conspired to put many counties in a difficult financial position.
