Word: emperor
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...equestrian statue he passes every day he is at home. "It is the symbol of the city, of enormous power. Peter wanted to learn, not just to command. With great symbols and images like that, you can't feel hopeless or helpless." Gergiev may need every bit of the emperor's strength -- along with those Kirov vitamins...
...sublime forest of columns and horseshoe arches as a communal space without the hierarchical orientation of a Christian basilica, as befitted Islamic ritual -- but they also based its double-arch system on the design of Roman aqueducts. "You have taken something unique and turned it into something mundane," the Emperor Charles V is said to have remarked, on seeing the mosque converted into a Catholic church after the reconquista...
There were complex alternatives that could have been more fully considered by the President, such as issuing a clear warning to Japan that the U.S. had created an atomic weapon, perhaps combined with a demonstration detonation and a surrender ultimatum that made clear that Japan could retain its Emperor. Likewise McCullough skirts the tortured debate on "atomic diplomacy," reducing it to the question of whether the Bomb was dropped in part to frighten the Soviets and then quickly dismissing this theory without exploring the complexities of revisionist arguments over the causes of the cold...
...supporting roles are less impressive but competent, the positive exception being Justin Levitt, who makes the most of the play's hilarious characterization of Emperor Joseph II as a benign fool. More troublesome are the Venticelli, played by Howie Axelrod and Eleanor Kincaid, and the three nobles, Baron von Strack (Alfred di Venturi), Count Orsini-Rosen-berg (Peter Galatin) and Baron von Swieten (Arzhang Kameri). The Venticelli are cold and supercilious while the nobles are earnest and straightforward in their delivery: thoughtful characterization would have thing the other way around. Finally, overacting is a recurring problem with these roles, since...
...seem at best anachronistic, at worst reactionary. Even the film's nomination for this year's foreign-language Academy Award might attest to the bland gentility of its virtues, if only because Red Lantern reprises the dour theme and visual extravagance of 1988's big winner, The Last Emperor. But this obscures the point of a brave, passionate and highly entertaining work of art. In the best movies, style reflects substance. And in this story of a wealthy man in 1920s China and the four women he keeps in pampered imprisonment, the decor underlines the sad fable of Woman...