Word: awkwardness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...LOVE ME Even American Idol's Simon Cowell, whose chest cavity apparently developed without a heart inside, rooted for Jennifer Hudson's soulful singer Effie in last year's Dreamgirls. All good movie musicals give us a lovable character to invest in - in Once it's Hansard's tender, awkward busker, in Hairspray Blonsky's cheerful teen reformer and Travolta's well-intentioned big momma. Contrast these huggable characters with, say, 2005's Rent, which celebrates broke, dysfunctional pseudo bohemians who you wish would just shut...
...Finally, a little masterpiece lurks here. It is called 14eme Arrondissement by Alexander Payne (Election, Sideways). It consists of no more than a middle-aged Denver woman (Margo Martindale) wandering around the city and reflecting on its sights and her life in her awkward, self-taught French. There's innocence, honesty, sadness and resolve. There's also a wonderful lack of irony or patronization in Payne's treatment of this story, an artlessness in Martindale's performance that is exemplary. It's the last work in Paris, Je T'Aime and its worth waiting for. It's worth the price...
...political landscape. He's analytical but not self-aware, sometimes so absorbed in big, important musings that he fails to straighten his tie or untuck his trouser legs from his socks or recognize his colleagues. At Labour's annual conference last fall, the premier-in-waiting made awkward progress around a reception organized by the party and full of potential donors, thrusting a large hand at unfamiliar guests and deploying a lame icebreaker about the conference venue in the industrial capital of northwest England. "Gordon Brown," he boomed at each encounter. "What do you think of Manchester...
...could be an awkward figure painter. His men can be as blocky as his lighthouses. And the women--what to make of his notion of eroticism, all those strapping females who manage to look both carnal and remote? A "hard muscular girl" is how someone described the typical Hopper woman, "sturdy of leg and breast, bulging in her clothes." True enough. But look at Second Story Sunlight, in which her face is a chalky mask with opaque brown lozenges for eyes. She never looks into yours and never will...
...criticized Core Curriculum. While the Core focuses on “ways of knowing,” the new program—which was introduced to the Faculty in February—stresses connections between academic study and the real world. Yesterday’s meeting was marked by awkward legislative maneuvers and aborted motions, as professors struggled to draw the long-running curriculum debate to a close. The lack of a quorum—which is defined as one-sixth of the voting Faculty members—at yesterday’s meeting left at least one professor wondering...