Word: kabuki
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...amnesia theme from the 2006 melodrama Unknown and referencing about a dozen movies set in Las Vegas, it revels in the hectic display of rude elements (sexual and ethnic stereotyping, pedophile gags, inappropriate people with their pants off) that have made the form as rigid in its conventions as Kabuki theater...
...there. The Hangover takes this scientifically suspicious multiple-amnesia gimmick, references about a dozen Vegas movies (from Leaving Las... to What Happens in... to Rain Man) and applies all the numbingly familiar tropes of the bromance comedy that have made this flourishing subgenre as rigid in its conventions as Kabuki theater...
...ready to buy art. And Stanley, 57, indulges them with brightly hued paintings that lean toward the abstract. (Think circles, squares and geometric patterns, reminiscent of an electric Madras plaid.) He does figurative work as well, namely the individual portraits he creates of his bandmates - in full Kabuki regalia - against a backdrop of sherbety colors. Jim Waitts, of Montville, N.J., is a three-decade-long Kiss fan who started collecting Stanley's work in 2007 and now owns more than a dozen paintings. "It strikes a chord in me," he says of the art. "It's the use of colors...
These events were designed to give the television networks fresh pictures to remind people to vote. But it's all a kabuki dance. The last days of a modern presidential campaign have a rote feel - quick flights followed by airport-hangar rallies in which McCain makes jokes, strains his vocal cords and repeats the same speech he has been making for about two weeks. If the microphones are not working well, which is often the case, he jokes that they are "brought to you by the Democratic National Committee." When he gets to the part where he calls Barack Obama...
...meet the challenge of dreadful events. The actress is capable of many things, but being ordinary isn't one of them. Jolie seems to know that her startling, cartoonish, monumental beauty is a handicap here, so she goes bigger in her movements. A stream of tears stains her Kabuki makeup; her sighs come with shrugs worthy of Atlas. Underplaying would have helped. So would the casting of an actress who's less glamorous and, I have to say, more human - someone like Naomi Watts...