(1) The scene is grim and portentous , and a sense of foreboding looms.

(2) While we study the pictures we are assaulted by an overblown, portentous , bombastic Bernard Herrmann score that borders on self-parody.

(3) His rhetoric is humorless and portentous - he always sounds to me like a slightly demented Episcopal bishop.

(4) The judging panel decried previous Booker choices as being u251cu00f6u251cu00e7u251cu2510pompous, portentous and pretentiousu251cu00f6u251cu00e7u251cu00fb, and promoted Waters and her fellow nominees as the writers truly deserving of attention.

(5) Miller had the advantage of having seen the play in the early 90s, when it was momentous and portentous .

(6) Don't go getting the impression that Demonstration is at all pompous or portentous , though.

(7) As if fulfilling the portentous predictions of some medieval soothsayer, the first year of this new century has witnessed an unprecedented catalogue of warnings of the cumulative effects of climate change.

(8) What made words (or at least particular kinds of words such as oaths) seem so threatening and portentous ?

(9) The first half of the movie is full of dreadful portentous moments that either go nowhere or end in cheap shocks.

(10) If the United Workers Party brass read the portentous signs, none was man enough to call their leader away from his Independence Day preparations and warn him of the gathering storm clouds.

(11) As the portentous millennium approached, evangelical thoughts turned to the long-awaited Second Coming of Christ and thence to Armageddon.

(12) He delights in tracing similarities of metaphor, suggestive accidents of fate, portentous parallels, uncanny coincidences, and unexpected connections.

(13) This is all very solemn and portentous , but it's impossible to shake the feeling this is a virtuoso example of preaching to the converted.

(14) The portentous original plan was to make three trilogies and so far we've been subjected to all three of the middle trilogy and, more recently, two of the first.

(15) The idiocy, and it is perennial, is to look at polls three or six or nine months out and make these pretentious and portentous conclusions before any human being has voted.

(16) It starts out OK, with a portentous and intriguing set up, but gets steadily cheesier and more melodramatic, until the author pulls out a genuine deus ex machina for the ending.

(17) Right from the portentous and pretentious but utterly muddled opening voice-over that quite inadequately sets the stage, this movie is an embarrassment of unintentional laughs.

(18) Forget everything you know about TV news - the portentous opening line, the handoff to your anchormate, the ominous toss to the reporter on remote.

(19) An example is the opening scene, in which the portentous water drops and golden filters are far too over-the-top in their attempt to highlight that scene's importance.

(20) Music that has a megalomaniac quality, that creates a portentous grandiosity without much in the way of inner self-reflexivity.