There is very little in the way of action or story -- no sudden, galvanizing revelations, no secrets, no carefully withheld surprises -- but the effect of watching people grapple with emotional difficulty and trying to communicate with one another proves riveting.
If you can let the transfixing music take you to this metaphysical sphere, you adjust to Wagner time, and the opera not only proves riveting but also seems the length it must be.
In Ailey's 1962 solo "Reflections in D," created in response to Duke Ellington's music, Matthew Rushing's lyrical control proves riveting, beautifully attuned to Eric Scott Reed's live performance at the piano.
Sometimes this proves riveting, as in the lengthy sequence wherein the NYPD narcotics department approaches Bird to become a snitch.
A long sail back from Madeira to Southampton under leaden January skies, and a day on Fuerteventura that may not prove too riveting.
"Rustling the Deities" for clarinet and piano by the Australian composer Nicholas Vines proved a riveting vehicle for Mr. Fingland's dazzling technique, while harnessing a certain ribald, wild energy that aptly conveyed images of satyrs reveling, rhyton in hand.
Here in Berlin, his new film Wolfsburg proved a riveting thriller about a yuppie car-dealer who kills a small boy in a hit-and-run accident and then falls in love with the boy's mother.
The theater itself borders on ramshackle but the performances proved believable, even riveting.
Well, except maybe the onetime Death Row Records honcho Suge Knight, whose preferred topic of conversation — far-flung theories about the contents of Hollywood's closet — proved less than riveting.
