Word: earnest
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They're both rich and famous, they're both notoriously earnest and left-leaning, they both have reputations for being emotionally tortured. So it makes a kind of cosmic sense that Sean Penn and Pearl Jam front man Eddie Vedder would be friends; they have been since 1995, when Vedder wrote music for Dead Man Walking, in which Penn starred. Both are currently experiencing second acts, Penn as a director and Vedder as a film composer. The duo have now collaborated: Vedder has written the sound track for Penn's movie Into the Wild, based on the book...
...something very attractive about the boots worn by the notorious bandit and ironist, Ben Wade (Russell Crowe) - a dapper, literate, sexy guy who whiles away his idle moments drawing sketches in his ever-present notebook. We are drawn more to his insouciant spirit than we are to the earnest, hard-pressed (and well-played) Dan. When the rancher, desperately needing the $200 fee, signs on to escort the captured outlaw through hard country in order to catch the 3:10 to Yuma where a courthouse, a trial and, doubtless, a necktie party await Ben, we know where our moral interest...
...More specifically, these plans aim to achieve near-universality with a couple of incentives. One is a general ethic of "volunteerism," enforced by peer pressure, corporate public service advertising campaigns, earnest reports from blue-ribbon commissions, speeches from politicians, covers of newsmagazines, goody-goody student-council types who infect every college campus, Oprah, Larry King, and so on. America is very good at marshalling all the forces of bullshit in our society toward a noble end, like stopping cruelty to animals or hounding sexual predators. Pressuring young people to "serve" for a year or two is a perfect subject...
...situation in Anbar is fragile at best as other problems loom ever larger in the face of political stalemate in Baghdad. But anyone wondering whether the surge strategy has brought gains is hard-pressed to deny some positive developments in Iraq since February, when the U.S. buildup began in earnest...
Will it work? Green is a natural fit on cable lifestyle shows or news programs--though enlisting a news division to do advocacy has its own issues. But commanding a sitcom like The Office to work in an earnest environmental theme sounds like the kind of high-handed p.r. directive that might be satirized on, well, The Office. Even Begley--formerly of St. Elsewhere--notes that the movie Chinatown worked because it kept the subplot about the water supply in Los Angeles well in the background: "It's a story about getting away with murder, and the water story...