Word: leos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Asterix and the Barbarians Re Leo Cendrowicz's article "Indomitable Gaul" [Nov. 30]: Asterix' broad appeal in France stems less from a symbolic political struggle against globalization and capitalism than from a cultural struggle against invaders, be they Roman conquerors, American pension funds or Chinese truffles. Patricia Tutin, PARIS
...life among the Tolstoyans plays out as a parallel to Leo's. Arriving at their woodsy compound, Valentin cheerfully observes that it's a beautiful day. "Yes, but we'll pay for it," says the grumpy Sergeyenko (Patrick Kennedy). Except for a carnal handywoman named Masha (Kerry Condon), who serves as a mini-Sofya to Valentin's mini-Leo, the Tolstoyans are too busy trying to adhere to their standards - vegetarianism, living off the land, practicing celibacy - to appreciate either a beautiful day or the fact that Tolstoy himself doesn't live up to them...
...could he stick with the vow of chastity when he's got Sofya around? Mirren makes her funny, irreverent and passionate. (Only she could pull off a seduction scene that includes clucking like a chicken.) Sofya has proved her devotion by bearing Leo 13 children and copying out his drafts of War and Peace by hand, six times. She's prone to manipulation, eavesdropping and temper. "I lost five children, why couldn't one of them have been you?" she snipes at their daughter Sasha (Anne-Marie Duff), who is in Chertkov's camp. Sofya is not generous. Yet Hoffman...
...figure out his own best - and private - end is certainly affecting, and that's what Plummer gives us. By the time we get to the "Last Station" itself, the Astapovo railway station where Tolstoy died, Hoffman finally lets Valentin fade into the background and the focus rest on Leo and Sofya. What you carry away from the movie is the reminder that a deathbed is the place where the living stake their possession for the last time and then watch it evaporate in irrelevance. Not a bad end for an imperfect movie...
Some professors who were accustomed to Harvard’s old schedule, with exams occurring after the holiday season, are being forced to adapt their syllabi to a shorter semester. In an e-mail, Literature professor Leo Damrosch wrote that he has tried this year to extend due dates for term papers past the end of a “painfully compressed” reading period...