Word: ayatollahs
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...Story goes like this. Back in the '80s, Randy "The Ram" Robinson (real name: Robin Ramzinsky) was a hero-stud pro wrestler; he fought "the Ayatollah" at the top of the Garden card. But after 20 years on the downalator - his body ballooned with exercise, bloated with steroids and damaged with the death of a thousand cuts - Randy works tank towns for a few hundred bucks. He's been locked out of his Jersey trailer home for laggard payments. And to secure the fans' roving attention, his ring rivals are getting into extreme fighting; one fellow, who looks like...
...SOFA, passed by Maliki's cabinet last weekend, needs to be approved by the 275-member parliament. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the country's most important Shi'ite cleric, has said any deal with the U.S. must be passed by a big majority in order to be truly legitimate in the eyes of the people. That seems unlikely. If the Sunni-Sadrist-secular alliance can break off a few MPs from Maliki's own Shi'ite-Kurdish block, they may even be able to defeat the proposition...
...astounding breakthrough work, Midnight's Children, through his current The Enchantress of Florence, he has been obsessed with both formal and informal belief, but from the point of view of a highly-educated Muslim-born sceptic. This potentially flammable combination combusted in 1989 when Iran's then supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, sanctioned Rushdie's execution by the faithful for alleged blasphemies in his fictional exploration of Islam's origins, The Satanic Verses...
...That Pope Benedict XVI and Ayatollah Khameini of Iran can elicit such differing, intense reactions - for that matter, that even comparing the two might seem incendiary to some Catholics - is one indication how religious belief informs political and social doctrine. Some of that contentiousness has lately seeped into moviegoing. Our texts for today are two indie films, Religulous and Fireproof, that appeal to diametrically opposed audiences. I can't imagine that there'd be a person who could respond to both films the way their makers want. If these movies happen to be playing in adjacent auditoriums at the multiplex...
...Anyone who's seen a boxing film will be able to predict the rest of The Wrestler. Randy gets one more chance: a 20-year rematch in Wilmington of his Ayatollah fight. Will he pass it up to save his life? (Not if there's gonna be an Act Three.) And the woman in his life - will Randy manage to connect with his estranged daughter (Wood), who hasn't forgiven him for abandoning her? (That's Act Two, where the only innovation is that the girl's mother is never mentioned). And will a local stripper, well played by Tomei...