Word: connoisseurs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Fourtou, a connoisseur of Bordeaux wine, was in his early 60s and cruising comfortably toward retirement after 16 years as head of the pharmaceutical firm Rhone-Poulenc, now part of Aventis. But the Vivendi board was desperate to find a respected executive to calm the company. Fourtou, who is 64, initially resisted but has since performed brilliantly. He has sold off about $12 billion in assets--not including Universal--and reshaped Vivendi around its telecommunications, music and French TV businesses. Those pieces don't make a great strategic fit, his critics point out, but Vivendi is a far more manageable...
...good old Hellenic fist power. Paris vs. Menelaus, Hector vs. Ajax the Great, Achilles vs. Hector--it's a dream card at Madison Square Garden, and the movie choreographs each set-to with burly ingenuity. This is The Iliad as a WWE SmackDown: violent fights, snappy insults and a connoisseur's idolatry of beautiful brawn. (Who knew Greece had so many blonds?) When Paris cringes from Menelaus and hugs Hector's sturdy leg, it's as if he thinks he can turn a one-on-one brawl into a tag-team match...
When Charlie Ferguson was growing up in Beech Grove, Ind., he would help his dad, a connoisseur of spicy food, to plant and tend a backyard crop of chili peppers. So began a lifelong love affair with hot peppers. As an adult, Ferguson found commercial salsa either too salty or not spicy enough for his discerning palate, and he started making his own. By the time he married Glenda Klingensmith eight years ago and moved to her farm in Noblesville, Ind., Ferguson, now 52, was hooked on homemade salsa--so much so that he started planting jalapenos, habaneros, red chilis...
While Ted Allen, the Queer Eye food and wine connoisseur, won't let straight folks serve up Cheez Whiz, Semi-Homemade's Lee swears by it as a flavor base. "It's about getting that 'from scratch' result without all the energy and effort," claims Lee. It is also about priorities. "Life is the blink of an eye," she says. "When you realize how short it ultimately is and how really insignificant perfection is, that doesn't mean you don't want to do things well, but you want to do them faster so you can take a bath, drink...
...cinemavens at the Toronto International Film Festival talk about movies with a connoisseur's urgency and will pick a fight over pictures that may never grace a cineplex. Takeshi Kitano's Zatoichi, with the star-director playing Japan's legendary blind swordsman, provoked one such debate. Some said it was too faithful to the old Zatoichi movies to be a true Takeshi film, others that it was too Takeshi to be a true Zatoichi. (No matter: the picture still won the People's Choice plebiscite...