Word: gimmicked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...marketing gurus for the series could hardly have dreamed of a better promotional gimmick when they started to investigate the backgrounds of the dozens of pop-star wannabes to root out the competitors' mushy stories of triumph over adversity that are a well-worn staple of the genre. Here was a tale guaranteed to attract eyeballs: a girl of mixed race, brought up by a single Chinese mother, struggling to gain acceptance in a deeply conservative, some would say racist, society...
...sunflowers, the entire film takes place in an Israeli tank holding four very nervous soldiers. The only view to the streets outside is through the gunsight aimed at insurgents and civilians. Which ones to shoot at? Which ones to save? Imprisoning the audience with the soldiers may be a gimmick, but it's an inspired one: the viewer wants both to stay inside - shielding them from harm, or from doing harm - and to get the hell out. The situation may be familiar from dozens of Hollywood foxhole dramas, but the treatment is original: What other movie has, as its exalting...
...Rivers Cuomo ’99-’06, of course, seems to call every other album “Weezer”. The motives for such a move are varied: often a return to roots, as in Pearl Jam’s case, or as a marketing gimmick to present the album as different and important. In naming their seventh album “Wilco (the Album),” Jeff Tweedy and the band seem to be announcing a realization of identity, defining their sound at an intersection of styles that they previously employed seperately. Unusually, this...
Many German commentators saw the government announcement as little more than an political p.r. gimmick. Still, the liberal Süddeutsche Zeitung saw the announcement as a sign of how technology once considered a pipe dream has moved firmly into the mainstream of public debate. "Electric cars are no longer a topic for madmen but for the government. A million of these cars should be zipping along German roads by 2020. The government is instigating a revolution," the paper wrote last week. (Read "Electric Cars: China's Power Play...
...like Child who write about what made them famous, or infamous. There are unremarkable people who write about a remarkable thing that happened to them. And there is the 21st century memoirist, who makes him- or herself interesting in order to write about it, usually through a time-centric gimmick, like spending a few months at, say, an ashram. Powell belongs to this last category, and cannily the movie lets us see how the wheels turn in her head. Ephron includes Child's real-life reaction to Powell's blog and lets it stand; she doesn't try to turn...