Word: breathlessness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...show after its admittedly terrible sixth season. But think back to how new and bracing the format that's now routine once was. Created before Sept. 11 and debuting just weeks after, 24 captured the country's edgy mood, and not just because it was about terrorism. With its breathless real-time format and multiscreens, 24 reflects the same information-overload media culture that gave us the zipper and screens within screens on cable news. The computers work a little too well, the Los Angeles traffic is suspiciously light, and Jack Bauer never has to take a leak, but Kiefer...
...that's not why we're at the theater watching Live Free. We're there to be rendered breathless by the stunts and the CGI tricks, which are admirably managed. And for the film's relentless, one-damn-thing-after-another pacing. In its primitiveness, its refusal of anything like psychological nuance or big ideas, lies its dubious glory. It is a movie born to be forgotten-except as something that against your better judgment, you had a pretty good time watching back in the summer of '07. Which is more than you can say for other elephantine sequels moping...
...best comedies always operate - without for a minute conveying the sense that their makers are aware of how funny they are being. They let us discover their weirdness in our own good time. I don't want to oversell You Kill Me. It is not going to leave you breathless with laughter. But I don't want to undersell it either. For an hour and a half it exerts its own preposterous reality, making you believe it - and like...
...leads to the payoff, when an agent tells the breathless owners, "I would list your house for ..." It may not be realistic (how certain can an appraiser be that a half-bath is worth exactly $20,000?). But it's brilliant TV, allowing us to indulge a little jealousy (say, of the lucky bastard who bought a Manhattan apartment for $90,000 in 1990) and vicarious money lust. And it demonstrates how the housing boom changed the way people look at their homes: as an expression of their financial savvy rather than their creative selves...
...showcased forgettable events and inaccessible places largely unknown to Koreans. Who cares to step inside a girls' high school or a U.S. Army base? Korean food is as delectable as any in the world. The all-night markets and live-music venues in Seoul are quintessential examples of the breathless Korean pace, and the mountaintop temples show the contrasting serenity of the countryside. It is greatly disappointing to read of the wonders of Asia and have the best of Korea overlooked. Danny Arens, Seoul...