The Queen's idea of an intimate public gesture is to pat the steaming neck of a successful horse; Diana sat down beside an AIDS patient and shook hands....When the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, appeared on television to pay tribute, he spoke in faltering tones, with the near-hamminess of the truly sincere.
Along with his likable, confidently sexy leads and an excellent troika in Mr. Slattery, Anthony Mackie and Terence Stamp, Mr. Nolfi keeps the film balanced between sincerity and self-conscious amusement, rarely faltering in tone.
With Jonathan Spitz, the principal cellist, setting the tone, those faltering wisps of melody proved truly transcendent, prevailing despite several thunderous fits of coughing from an audience that had been blessedly quiet through most of the afternoon.
Even the affectionate portraits are barbed, while the spiteful ones are virtually mined; yet Marias rarely falters from a tone of absent-minded curiosity.
Its political momentum had already shown signs of faltering last November, when Reed was forced to tone down some of the measure's harshest and more constitutionally radical language.
"We'll get through this," the older woman says to the younger, in a tone oozing sympathy and understanding, clearly intended to buck up faltering spirits.
"Shadow of the Vampire" at times falters in finding a tone and a narrative line adequate to its central ideas.
Smith's side were different because their concentration never faltered and the methodical tone was sustained to such an extent that little incident was permitted.
The tone occasionally falters: there is slightly too much Balkan kitsch in the second act, and the grisettes at Maxim's are not really raunchy enough.
Clinton breathed life into Barack Obama's faltering 2012 presidential campaign with an emotional convention speech, but speaking in Nashua, the second largest city in New Hampshire, his tone in support of his wife was less stirring and more subdued.
