Word: marveled
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...graphics. Whoever designs the lead-ins to the various programs deserves a Milton Glazer Award for ingenuity and elegance. Osborne used to be fanfared with a shot of the grand (and imaginary) TCM Building, a Deco marvel. The late-night movies are heralded by glimpses of a counterman at a diner, a woman seen dressing in a high window, a fellow waiting for customers in the ticket booth of a 24-hr. theater. The most elaborate intro assembled nearly 30 musicians on pieces of a bandstand assembled by workmen and coming together to create a sumptuous aural-visual orchestration...
...Tunnels have been a factor in conflicts and escapes for millennia; only after the Vietnam War did the world came to appreciate the engineering marvel the Vietnamese Communists accomplished in the Cu Chi tunnel networks, which was as extensive as the New York City subway system. But in today's age of asymmetric conflict tunneling seems to have a new cachet. The US military is finding this out in Iraq and Afghanistan, where there have been numerous successful and nearly successful underground breaches at bases and prisons where suspected terrorists are held. "Protecting underground perimeters is the next capability...
...appeal of so many of the fables Stan Lee and his colleagues have spun out for Marvel Comics is their confirmation of what any young reader may have thought about himself as his body changes and his mind reels: I'm a freak. To this Lee adds the fantasy: But your weirdness is a sign of preternatural abilities; you're odd because you're a hero. Spider-Man emits goo from his fingers, and he can fly. The Hulk gets mad and becomes bigger and stronger. Wolverine's Dragon Lady fingernails make him the toughest guy on the block...
...Origins: Wolverine is an O.K., not great, Marvel movie that tells the early story of the prime X-Man, and attempts to make it climax in a perfect coupling with the start of the known trilogy. In doing so, the film tears off a bit more than it can devour. The whole enterprise now spans a century and a half, runs backward and forward in time and expands the number of characters in the mythology, so they'll get their own prequels and sequels...
...Marvel, you see, is working on another Origins take, Magneto, about the early lives of Eric Lensherr (who in the trilogy was played as a middle-aged man by Ian McKellen) and Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart, who makes a guest appearance here). It's not surprising, then, that the movie has the harried feel of a personnel officer with too many people to manage, too many plates to keep spinning. Wolverine lacks the simple narrative drive and character pizzazz of Iron Man, the Marvel movie that launched last year's summer blockbuster season...