Word: bleak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...droll Dutch gem, Tanghi Argentini, and a Danish hospital weepie, At Night. In a year when the best foreign-language films weren't even nominated, the Oscar went to The Counterfeiters, an Austrian drama about (really?) the Holocaust. Points to it, though, for lacing its noble sentiment with the bleak cynicism of a forger who remains devoted to his craft under the worst circumstances. In Feature Documentary, a strong category this year, the Guantanamo exposé, Taxi to the Dark Side, beat out the better-known (and also excellent) No End in Sight and Michael Moore's Sicko...
...benign opening to such an epic tragedy. From Act Two on, the production makes a complete turn-around, as the back scrim becomes a tornado’s sky, foreboding and infinite, and Cranko’s characteristically modernist aesthetic finally takes hold, replacing the traditional grandiose set with bleak minimalism. Swords clink to the beat of the music as Tybalt (Yury Yanowsky) kills Mercutio (Reyniers Reyes) and Romeo kills Tybalt. Both death scenes are heart-wrenching, reminding us that there are no clear victories and no concrete enemies in the world of Shakespeare. Equally as heart-wrenching...
There's nothing wrong, of course, with delighting in love and honoring friendship and stopping in the bleak midwinter to tickle the people we love. But it's also a good sign of psychosocial health if the day just saunters by and winks, and you feel no need to pay attention. The minute it feels like a duty, it has lost its purpose. "Love sought is good," Shakespeare observed, "but given unsought is better...
...crumbling edifice around him. At the lower end of the social order are characters who reside in shacks on the building's rooftop; Taha is the earnest son of the building's doorman, and Busayna is a beautiful shopgirl, whose dream of marrying him is gradually crushed by his bleak financial prospects. In the novel's heartbreaking dénouement, Taha dies in a gun battle with police. He had become a radical Islamist, lured into a terrorist group after his hope of becoming a policeman himself was dashed because of his low social standing and lack of political connections...
...Walls aside, what Israel sorely misses is the capacity to strike fear into its neighbors, deterrence. The Winograd Commission spelled it out in bleak terms in its report on Israel's failures during the 34-day war. "Israel cannot survive," the official statement said, unless it is able to deter its enemies - teach Hamas and Hizballah a lesson they won't forget...