(1) But this exercise reeks of contrivance and even desperation.

(2) Coincidence and contrivance have played a significant role in your work.

(3) It was a bunch of people who got together to try to nut out a problem, or to think about a problem, and I think to say what they came up with is a contrivance merely to serve the interests of organ donation is unfair.

(4) The overall storyline is slight, and relies on at least one significant contrivance , but the movie offers enough in the way of small pleasures to be worth a recommendation, provided you enjoy this kind of low-key drama.

(5) But possession breeds use as every apprentice office equipment salesman knows full well, and the contrivance that was unwanted yesterday becomes indispensable today.

(6) But her work is very much about contrivance and artificiality.

(7) Remarkably, after so much contrivance , the overall esthetic is relaxed and spontaneous, largely because he intercedes with a few gestural strokes of white paint here and there to unify the varied linear elements and textures.

(8) Although many connect the word with a quiet life of withdrawal, I need a word to designate those times when we sense that a life is being lived well, that a conviction is held honestly, without contrivance .

(9) Successful navigation was almost entirely due to the skill of the crew as opposed to any man-made contrivance .

(10) Indeed, the handshake has permeated our culture, our etiquette, our daily lives, to become perhaps our most important non-verbal communicative contrivance .

(11) He held his breath a moment but nothing happened, so he then experimented with some of the contrivance 's controls, discovering that one could cause portions of the wings and the tail to flap somewhat.

(12) Rachel's investigation is a follow-the-dots exercise in coincidence and contrivance , like a gothic version of bad Agatha Christie.

(13) It is this that enables him to captivate the reader without recourse to melodrama, to luxuriate in language without falling into self-indulgence, and to weave the novel's numerous threads together without a hint of jarring contrivance .

(14) His life seemed a contrivance , a bureaucratic invention.

(15) Lily and her younger, single sister, Judy, find themselves awkwardly back on equal footing, and, in the series' one contrivance , Lily's best friend, Naomi, also happens to be good friends with Karen.

(16) But the essence of the film - a meditation on gender differences and the fluidity of sexuality merged with a romance - is the film-makers' contrivance .

(17) A developmentally challenged Italian teenager goes to Berlin with the father he's never met (the film's sole contrivance - wouldn't his guardians come along?) for medical tests.

(18) A master at work, he commands the screen with an effortless ease and a complete lack of artifice or contrivance .

(19) His carefully-constructed contrivance was about to unravel.

(20) But there is really nothing of contrivance about it.