Word: gimmicked
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...producers are pinning their hopes on Blu-ray for a simple reason: the DVD business, which accounts for most of their revenue, is in the doldrums, and a new format might spur a worldwide shopping spree for the latest application of a cool gimmick - like for PlayStation 3 or Wii, only more so. Yeah, but money's tight these days. Consumers want to know if they have to buy a Blu-ray or whether it's just an incremental improvement that will soon be rendered obsolete when high-quality movie downloads from the Internet become available...
...hash - wise, for possibly only Jesus bests Lincoln in the number of published books devoted to a single person - Gopnik offers a meditation on each man's most literary qualities: Lincoln's deceptively simple legalistic language and Darwin's crystalline powers of observation. And what could have been a gimmick (a book timed to twin bicentennials is as close as historical biographies get to a home run) becomes something more, a learned treatise that worships learning. Gone is the overly twee writing of Gopnik's memoir-inflected works (Paris to the Moon, Through the Children's Gate...
Other sonic tricks have had their moment--notably Peter Frampton's "talk- box," a plastic tube that made his guitar sound as if it were talking--but in skilled hands, Auto-Tune is the rare gimmick that can lead to innovation. On T-Pain's latest album, Thr33 Ringz, tracks like "Karaoke" and "Chopped N Skrewed" literally bounce between notes, giving the record a kids-on--Pop Rocks exuberance. Using the same program, West's 808s & Heartbreak is the complete opposite--angsty, slow and brutally introspective. West sings throughout, and while he couldn't have hit most of the notes...
...advent of talkies was the first, followed by the transition from black-and-white to color. He and other Hollywood luminaries, including James Cameron (who's currently making Avatar, a live-action 3-D movie), believe that 3-D, when done properly, isn't a zany retro gimmick but a narrative tool to pull movie watchers even deeper into the film - just like sound and color...
Vincent shines when she describes the illnesses of others that surround her. She writes of other patients with sympathy, compassion, and an understanding that comes with shared experiences. The book would have worked much better if Vincent forwent the gimmick of three shallow hospital stays for a single illuminating one. Unfortunately, that also would have ruined the book's entire premise...