Word: focals
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...exactly lovely," she said. "It makes you sort of a focal point...
...recently remodeled Axis space was arranged to privilege the DJ; he stood at the center of a row of equipment at the focal point of the new, terraced dance floor...
...conscience. But though all the right ingredients are assembled, the equation somehow fails to add up. The complexity and tension inherent to the characters aren't played out to their full potential, resulting in a certain degree of dramatic sag. Without strong characterizations, the plot founders, and the focal trio is all too easily eclipsed by the bombastic military hullabaloo around them. The biggest problem is that Li Xuejian, for better or worse, gives a truly confused portrait of the emperor, alternating between unabashed cruelty and childish buffoonery. His emperor is conflicted and multifaceted, for sure --but lacking the visible...
...aimlessness of life is what distinguishes it from its nearest relative, Robert Altman's Short Cuts. Where that film found black social satire in forcing its inhabitants' to collide in a series of chance events, Magnolia opts for an intimate and studied portrait of each of its nine focal characters by allowing their suffering to be its own dramatic vehicle. Nonetheless, Anderson is a cinephile, and he is indebted here, as in all of his work, to other distinctive and established filmmakers, Altman especially. This film bears some obvious resemblance to Short Cuts not only in its Californian locale (Magnolia...
...history of the times is largely a history of the Dutch fighting the Spanish, the Protestants at war with Catholics. In the arena of art, the focal conflict is the war between the Dutch Rembrandt and Peter Paul Rubens, the most popular artist of the previous generation and a court painter of the Spanish Habsburgs. A good chunk of this thick, richly illustrated book is about Rubens' background and family; Rembrandt himself is barely mentioned for an entire chapter. Schama compares paintings and history to show the anxious influence at work between Rembrandt and his older, more popular precursor. Rembrandt...