Word: hollywoodisms
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...Indian Ocean look computer-generated: arrayed in turquoise pods, they stretch over an azure expanse that would span from Rome to Budapest. Ibn Battuta, the 14th century Arab explorer, hailed the archipelago as "one of the wonders of the world." Ever since, the Maldives has enchanted shipwrecked sailors, Hollywood celebrities and Russian oligarchs fortunate enough to wash up by its shores. Yet beneath this outsiders' vision of paradise lurks a more troubled reality - one shaped by 30 years of a suffocating dictatorship that ended only last year...
...legislator and ran for Senate in 2002.) They homeschool, reject evolution and eschew pop culture--except Today show visits and their series--and when the kids watch a DVD, an elder daughter puts a hand on the screen to hide a character's immodest dress. Watching Jim-Bob criticize Hollywood moviemaking--"It might make money for companies, but it's not good for individuals"--you're staring at the strange no-man's-land where conservative and liberal anticorporate rhetoric overlap...
...History repeats itself. On April 22, 2004, an American football star named Pat Tillman was killed in action in Afghanistan. After September 11, Tillman had eschewed a $3.6 million sports contract to volunteer for the Army Rangers. Selfless and ruggedly handsome, he could have played himself in the Hollywood movie about his life—had he not been shot by his own troops. On April 28, Rene Gonzalez, a political science graduate student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, objected to calling Tillman a war hero, pointing out in an essay that this “anti-hero?...
...transparent as this device is, Angels has elemental satisfactions in its blend of movie genre that could appeal to wide segments of the audience. For Hollywood's core demographic, this is a serial-killer thriller, not far from the Saw series in its devoutly clinical depiction of distressed bodies. (See the eyeball on the floor! Gasp as plump rats snack on a dead Cardinal's face!) For adults who are or were Catholic, the movie is a backstage story of Vatican politicking, à la Monsignor and The Godfather Part III; it paints the College of Cardinals as possibly the only...
...Skeptics have been predicting Cannes' demise for decades, ever since European and Asian cinema became the merest boutiques outside the juggernaut Wal-Mart that is Hollywood. American movies rule the box office in nearly every country they're allowed free access to, so who cares about art films? Acknowledging the challenge, Cannes' chief programmer Thierry Frémaux is savvy enough to pepper his slate with brand names and faces - folks who will get their pictures on TV, in magazines and on the Internet, and earn the festival free publicity around the globe. This year Cannes has star quality...