Word: banalized
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unresolved narrative gives way to something far more beautiful and profoundly troubling. “Fat City” is a novel that changes itself as it moves. Tully struggles, torn between returning to the ring and succumbing to alcoholism. One of the most vibrant and paradoxically banal sections comprises Tully’s time as a day worker reminiscent of “Grapes of Wrath;” “Tully was hardly thinking now, his mind fixed on pain and chopping and a vision of quitting time. Seeing a man go to the edge...
...Later”) leads the film’s fictionalized diffusing team with a stunning performance as Sergeant First Class William James, a bomb-man with a death wish. The plot, essentially composed of almost journalistic vignettes, traces the ups and downs of everyday soldier life. Even the most banal serves as a suspenseful contrast to ticking bombs and explosions. When James confuses a dead boy’s bomb-strapped body for the young Iraqi kid he’d befriended, his reaction is both sincere and destructive—like no shortage of other situations in Iraq...
...other hand, Jerry Oppenheimer's Madoff with the Money (Wiley) reflects its tabloid title. Told with faux breathlessness, it reads at times like a quickly compiled clip job. On occasion, he uses the annoying supermarket-rag technique of quoting "Madoff insiders" for banal details, such as that Madoff liked expensive suits, in order to raise the level of suspense. But Oppenheimer can be good at the juicy quote too. One victim told him, "What were we going to do--call up Bernie and tell him, 'God, I'm making too much money. What's going on?'" Or the small detail...
...biggest job is the city's biggest township. Soweto is an acronym for South Western Townships, the banal moniker apartheid-era leaders bestowed on the dormitory city they created for blacks on the edge of town. The apartheid government decided blacks had no need for not only freedom, fair wages and a decent education but also roads, trees and houses. Soweto was a place of tin shacks and red dirt. As part of the effort to redress this legacy of inequality, the mayor has repaved Soweto's main roads, and Williamson invented his extreme park missions...
...turns out, are the domain of Seattle-based meme guru Ben Huh, 31. One of his staffers sent him a link to Hoekstra's original tweet, Huh says, and as the responses started flowing in he immediately saw meme potential in Hoekstra's juxtaposition of the horrific and the banal. "You can't really explain why it's funny, but it is," he says. Huh has not yet heard from Hoekstra, but he expects the congressman to be overwhelmed by satirical posts next time he logs online. "I'm pretty sure when he finally checks his Twitter account...