Word: fractious
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Sept. 11 cast another shadow over the relationship. Vajpayee had been enjoying the glow of a growing friendship with the U.S. Washington liked the way he reined in his party's hotheads and diluted its hard-line agenda, and admired his skill at holding together his fractious coalition for an unprecedented three years. He had almost persuaded the U.S. to blacklist Pakistan as a terrorist state for supporting the Kashmir jihadis, while practicing admirable restraint by not retaliating directly against Pakistan...
...awoke with a jolt. Overnight, this land of "bowling alone," of Internet introversion, of fractious multiculturalism developed an extraordinary solidarity--a vast outpouring of charity and volunteering; a suppression of partisanship and ethnic division; a coalescing behind resolute national leadership anchored by a new, untested President who rose extraordinarily to the occasion...
...film, like all biopics, can give only an impression of its subject's life. And so it elides much of Ali's busy romantic history (three relationships stand in for many), and we get a pretty fragmented sense of how he managed (or didn't) his slippery, fractious entourage. There are times when the film makes us hunger for more (or at least better connected) information. There are times in Will Smith's performance when you wish he would be a little less conscientious in his imitation of life, a little more, well, yes, instinctive in his performance. And Mann...
...WITH A FRIEND LIKE HARRY A man who claims to be an old school pal encounters a luckless writer and his fractious family on a French highway. He sets about bettering their fortunes--an activity that requires a number of capital crimes. Director Dominik Moll exceeds Hitchcock in wry and energetic perversity in this dryly delicious movie...
Sovagovic plays him with a sweet, hopeful patience. Indeed, all the actors in No Man's Land are wonderfully alive, fractious and unpredictable. Their performances also help break down the schematics and turn this into an emotionally potent, powerfully thoughtful and finally tragic experience...