| They don't romanticize the instrument's folk origins or go in for New Age contrivances. |
| Unconventional contrivances and machina arcana include a range of desktop siege weapons including miniature trebuchets, ballistae, and mangonels. |
| They work, they may even work admirably well, but there is no sense that these contrivances are the result of an omnipotent designer. |
| A big part of it has to do with lame plot contrivances that slow the movie down rather than speeding it up. |
| All of them had various handy contrivances devised by their owner which saved toil. |
| Its pulsing inventiveness charges the most absurd contrivances with life, just as opera should. |
