Even now it feels startlingly contemporary in its acceptance of multiple forms of sexuality, its sharp focus on the nature of identity and the costs of exile, and its grasp of what we now label "dysfunctional families."

And he uses this startlingly contemporary, implicitly youthful style to tell a story whose urgency reflects a long and difficult life.

The startlingly contemporary observation is at the end of the passage-I've bolded it, in case you're pressed for time-but I can't resist tossing in the buildup as well:

One that does is the startlingly contemporary "State of the Union," from 1948, in which Spencer Tracy is unhappily married to Katharine Hepburn and having an affair with Angela Lansbury, a newspaper tycoon.

It is a startlingly contemporary tribute to a monk whose life and work seems lifted directly from the Middle Ages.

Dietrich Mateschitz, the Salzburg-born owner of Red Bull, has opened a startlingly contemporary aeronautical museum, Hangar 7, near the airport, designed by Volkmar Burgstaller to recall the engines and wing of a plane.

Swathed though she was in dazzling period frocks, the countess, who was born Virginia Oldoini in 1837, gazes out of these portraits with a self-possession that strikes a modern viewer as startlingly contemporary.

The house looks startlingly contemporary for a building designed in the 1940's, with flush glass windows and the simplest of mullions.

The startlingly contemporary reference points the writers choose - malls, a precinct station house, broken homes - also seemed unconventional at first.

A lot of bumping and bowing is occurring as this startlingly contemporary building tries to enter into the city's history.