Word: clever
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It’s not only Clark who’s having problems: most of the younger actors don’t quite fit, from the portrayal of the mean Noah Claypole to the clever Artful Dodger. Luckily for the audience, the narrative emphasis is taken off Oliver and the other children in favor of more complex characters like Fagin (Ben Kingsley), the leader of the pickpocket gang...
...seem to be worried about neutrality. Its bad guys are all Republicans, from the vile Speaker of the House Nathan Templeton (Donald Sutherland) to the White House staff members who urge Allen to resign, saying the world is not ready for a painted fingernail on the nuclear button. (Clever move: daring you to prove you're not a sexist by watching the show...
...you’ve been to Starbucks lately, you may have noticed that they’re selling a new kind of bottled water called Ethos. Ethos, which is wholly owned by Starbucks, is based on the clever idea that consumers will buy more products if they think their purchase helps bring clean water to the developing world...
...personal histories that populate the pages, is reminiscent of White Teeth. But On Beauty does not try to duplicate either the breakneck speed or the hilarity of Smith's first book. It's also strikingly different from her 2002 disappointment The Autograph Man, which degenerated into an artificially clever, pop-saturated riff on the anxieties of being twentysomething, and cast a shadow over her early successes. She still can't resist dotting the pages with inside references to everything from Tupac Shakur to Harold Bloom. But this time she shows greater restraint - and self-awareness. In the past, Smith...
...expected from it, "the mystery, the power, the freedom." But novelists, those eternal spoilsports, keep pointing out the fantasy's downside. Wells' protagonist eventually despaired of himself as a "helpless absurdity" before being hunted down and beaten to death. Now two contemporary writers, an artful veteran and a clever newcomer, offer variations on the theme that are hardly more optimistic. Their central characters, while not quite killed, lose virtually everything else along with their visibility -- jobs, apartments, girlfriends, respectability. Invisibility, these novels suggest, is a difficult and dangerous condition, and there is no fun in it. Except, happily...