There were no seals; it was a pretense.
It was a pretense-free, almost wholly unfashionable performance that in many ways smelled of the 1970s, the decade of decline and digging in again.
It's a silly enough pretense for keeping Lowe alive long enough for him to reconsider, for many also rather clunky reasons, his original murderous mission, but the scenes between the men are affecting enough to justify forgiveness.
It's a homey place without pretense, and a trip to Bart and Yeti's is a most economical choice for Vail.
Obama's "grassroots bipartisanship" may be fraught with peril as well as opportunity from a strategic point of view, but it's not a pretense or a feint.
It's all pretense — not the kind of pretense that brings us fake Georgian or fake Renaissance but the pretense that the hoopla is somehow connected to a meaningful architectural idea.
In this sense, the pretense of form -- that it is a serial -- is simply a pretense.
Mr. Wieseltier added: "It is a kind of antimodern pretense, but of course he is in fact a completely modern man.
The city is a pretense; it could be Omaha or Osaka for all the cast members care.
