Word: backdrop
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...Deng Xiaoping ten years ago began a miraculous economic transformation, to Beijing and a village not far from the capital that is infinitely poorer than towns a thousand miles farther inland, I find little that is charming or especially exotic. Just a mostly drab and dusty country, a perfect backdrop for the tedious and too often unrewarding nature of daily life. Still, the people seem energetic, if fitful; a fifth of the world's population in a cage. Good, hardworking people who deserve better than the suffocating Communism that limits their enterprise...
...central romance, like the political backdrop, is a rescue fantasy. Soldier Chris (Simon Bowman) meets Kim (Lea Salonga), a village girl turned prostitute, and seeks to save her from that servitude, then from the wrath of a cousin to whom she was betrothed in childhood. At last, impulsively, he vows to save her from the coming chaos. His heart is good, but his head is clouded: he has no thought for the practical realities of her future in an alien land, only for the sweet moment of his own chivalry. Even that fails. In this revamping of Madama Butterfly, Chris...
...film's score supports its weighty subject matter. Most viewers will recognize the distinctive sound of Hugh Maskela and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who provide a stirring aural backdrop to the colorful panoramas of township protest...
Painted against the backdrop of a national cultural identity constantly changing its definitions, Leibowitz's extensive investigation of Americans' personal style and all the misrepresentations and half-truths contained within is justifiably ambitious...
Even though it has been 30 years since Allen Drury published Advise and Consent, the landmark novel of backstairs intrigue on Capitol Hill, its plot remains eerily contemporary. Against the backdrop of a brutal confirmation battle reminiscent of the John Tower nomination, the 1959 novel portrays an earnest young Senator who tries in vain to resist political blackmail over a homosexual encounter in his distant past. But the Senator is driven to suicide when he learns that an unsavory syndicated columnist is about to print the politically devastating charges. A fictional Washington Post executive explains haplessly that while no responsible...