Word: dourness
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This tart, eccentric hour has aged better than the WB's more dour soaps (Smallville, One Tree Hill) because it has a sense of humor-from the oddball townsfolk of Stars Hollow to the snappy, never sappy dialogue. Girls may look like a drama, but it plays like a romantic comedy. And yet the most central love story is neither the entanglements of single mom Lorelai (Lauren Graham) nor of her brainy offspring Rory (Alexis Bledel). It's the one between the two of them: sharp, witty and highly caffeinated, they're Tracy and Hepburn as mother and daughter...
...determined to celebrate the variety of international film. The planet's largest annual trade show, photo op and schmoozathon, Cannes this year welcomed movies from Cambodia and Korea, Hungary and Kurdish Iraq. Films that will never become Sith-size hits win Cannes' Palme d'Or - as L'Enfant, another dour view of the Belgian underclass by the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, did at Saturday night's closing ceremony. But the festival organizers, like the rubberneckers outside the Palais, are smitten by star quality. Sharon Stone, one of the few Hollywood actresses adept at radiating that old-time sexual...
...their bulbs, Sherawat summoned old-timers' memories of a festival 50 years ago, when the vision of the young Brigitte Bardot on the beach first sold the the world on the notion of this Riviera resort as the home for unbuttoned movie glamour. The movies may have grown more dour, but the stars still make it smile. As Cannes was, so Cannes...
...Broken Flowers held promise of being a breakthrough comedy for Jarmusch. Murray, lately the go-to actor for independent-minded directors, has established an amusingly dour screen personality that twins nicely with Jarmusch's. The writer-director shows his understanding of the Murray persona by casting him as Don Johnston, a man who searches for the mother of his son less out of a passion for knowledge than because he lacks the resolve to say no to his neighbor Winston (Jeffrey Wright), who had eagerly proposed the trip. The presence of Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton...
Obviously the Disney people hoped to accomplish a similar sort of generic revivification for younger children with One Magic Christmas, which is about a little girl's attempt to get her dour mom (Mary Steenburgen) into the holiday spirit. The child is given a guardian angel and Santa Claus as helpers, but the script lacks a clear narrative line, the supporting cast is woefully weak, and Director Borsos' touch is too heavy for the light fantastic. --By Richard Schickel