Word: emperor
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...actors, one imagines, needed very little help at all, beyond the occasional suggestion to play broadly. As usual, Ming the Merciless, Emperor of Mongo, is bent on destroying the earth and, failing that, making life as unpleasant as possible for Flash (Sam J. Jones), his girlfriend Dale Arden (Melody Anderson) and his pal Dr. Zarkov (Topol). The results of this obsession are colorful: large and small battles, peril to Dale's virtue ("Prepare her for my pleasure," intones Ming at one point), sundry bondage fantasies. The high points are a whip fight staged on a wildly tilting platform...
...that, Giscard's control has not been total. The present trouble began in the autumn of 1979 when Le Canard reported that the President had, as both Finance Minister and President, accepted gifts of diamonds worth more than $240,000 from the tyrannical Central African Republic "Emperor" Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who was deposed last year with the help of French troops. Le Canard also published Giscard's 1978 income tax return, pointing out that he continued to be an active shareholder in the Paris Bourse while making decisions that presumably could affect his stock prices. Then...
Before The Competition is finally decided, audiences will have witnessed the defection of the Russian artist's teacher and the emotional collapse of her charge; Dreyfuss's disputing Conductor Sam Wanamaker's interpretation of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto and taking over the baton to show the orchestra how it should be done (not exactly the way to win an important friend); a string snapping in Irving's piano as she launches into her concerto (she insists on changing not only pianos but the piece she has rehearsed). Besides all this, there are the predictable bits...
This year is the 450th anniversary of the Augsburg Confession, an early and central creed of Lutheranism. Lutherans presented it as a statement of their doctrinal agreements and disagreements with Rome at an unsuccessful conference called by the Emperor Charles V, in the hope of reuniting Western Christendom...
Among China's defects, Yuan mentions its long imitation of the Soviet system, which was not relevant to local conditions. Like many other intellectuals, he also blames the country's "feudal heritage," the centuries during which China's economy remained backward and "the Emperor's word was law." Adds Yuan: "One thing that the common people get very angry about is the special privileges of high-ranking officials. There used to be a saying in the old society that once a man got promoted, even his dogs and chickens could go to heaven." This notion lingers...