Word: bladed
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...conclusion of Hannibal is often exciting. At the top of his form, Harris is the class of the current field of thriller writers, ladling out authentic-sounding information on such arcana as weapons ("Yes, I'll have that Harpy, please, and a straight serrated Spyderco with a four-inch blade, and that drop-point skinner at the back") and Swiss bank accounts ("Article 47 of the Bundesgesetz uber Banken und Sparkassen"), plus sharp thumbnail portraits of the major players and malefactors and incessant plot surprises...
...time to admit this, I have particularly enjoyed some of the bloodier ones. I've sat many an afternoon at the PlayStation, blowing enemy warplanes out of the sky in Ace Combat 2. I find it relaxing, almost meditative. I love fighting games, such as the Samurai-slashing Bushido Blade or the kung fu-ish Tekken 2. They work out my twitchy reflexes. I've become lost for days on end in strategic battle simulations, like Age of Empires, a game that lets you play God and create legions of workers and armies--and then lay waste to rival civilizations...
Still, based on reading the script (hasn't everybody?) and seeing scraps of the film, we get intimations of something fresh, handsome, grand. Naboo's golden underwater city glows like an Art Nouveau chandelier, while the Jedi knights' home base, Coruscant, could come from a spiffier Blade Runner. The new sidekick, a computer-birthed frog boy named Jar Jar Binks, is a vexing, endearing mix of Kipling's Gunga Din and Tolkien's Gollum, and speaks in a pidgin English ("Yousa Jedi not all yousa cracked up to be!") that will be every kid's secret language this summer. Even...
...blade of pure energy, created by a power cell and focused by crystals. The beam tends to be color-codes: Sith lords use red, Obi-Wan blue. While most light sabers emit a single blade, Darth Maul's double-bladed variation, shown, provides twice as much action in a climactic duel with...
...returns to the same down-and-outs and restless souls, this time with more rumble, kick and bluesy musings than barroom rasped ramblings. Hobo yowler "Cold Water" will rattle in your head for days. Quieter moments are searing, Waits' gravelly voice bending like an old tree under the blade of a pocketknife. To top it off, he spikes the album with oddities like "Eyeball Kid." On Mule Variations, the music pounds and the lyrics are sharp, "My eyes say their prayers to her/sailors ring her bell/Like a moth mistakes a light bulb/For the moon and goes to hell." From...