Word: birching
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...UNITED ARTISTS FILMS Scarlett Johansson and Thora Birch play Rebecca and Enid in 'Ghost World...
...Ghost World," the movie, keeps the same premise as the book. Two best-friends, Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), just graduated from high school, share a private universe of weirdness. Unfunny comedians, Indian rock and roll music of the sixties, abandoned pants on a sidewalk: anything uncoopted by the corporate American monoculture becomes an object of worship. They gripe about having no sex because all the boys are intolerably interested in sports or guitars and amuse themselves by obsessively following weirdoes around their homogenous, suburban neighborhood. But slowly the relationship becomes strained as Enid befriends Seymour (Steve Buscemi...
...Thora Birch, with her black bobbed hair and constantly changing "look," embodies the cartoon Enid so closely it almost feels embarrassing-- like seeing someone you know on the screen. Fans of the Clowes original will want the audience to like her even if she's kind of obnoxious and opinionated. Johansson likewise perfectly matches the blonde, more reserved Rebecca. And though his character doesn't exist in the original comic, Buscemi's self-hating, nerdish record collector Seymour could easily have stepped out of its pages...
...Tumen river divides North Korea and China along more than 500 km, rushing through broad valleys dotted with ramshackle farming villages and soaring mountain slopes of pine, fir and birch. In some places it pinches into a stream so narrow you can toss a stone to the other bank or wade across, at least before the summer rains start. Kim Kyung Sun has been back and forth so many times he has lost count. Last week he crossed into China from the North Korean side once again?he hopes for the last time...
...near-autonomous 1,000-year-old system of government. (To the Manx, Britain is not the mainland; the island is the mainland, and Britain is obliquely referred to as "across," as in "What's the weather like across?") True, this separateness has encouraged only slow social change: birching, or beating with a birch rod, for crimes of violence against a person was still going strong in the 1970s, homosexuality was not legalized until 1992 and abortion has been permitted for mothers at risk only since 1995. Crime levels belong to '50s Britain, and even a minor mugging will make...