Word: masterful
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...still restricted by a hidebound hierarchy. When their coach saunters by their training corner at the Athens Aquatic Center, members of Japan's swimming team rip off their MP3-player headphones and bob their heads in a simultaneous expression of fealty. Their coach is still called sensei, or master...
Nameless has three main adversaries: Sky (Donnie Yen), a master martial artist; Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), a calligrapher who is as adroit with a saber as with a brush; and Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), Broken Sword's soul mate. Flying Snow has a side skirmish with Moon (Zhang Ziyi), Broken Sword's smitten apprentice. Loyalties are tested, alliances made and sundered. Death is the price for betrayal--of the Emperor or the heart...
...ghosts that possess Mitchell--James Joyce, Thomas Pynchon, Martin Amis--are sturdy ones, and this master of voices knows science and generic utopian Asia, Steven Spielberg and British misanthropy. His language crackles with texture and bite: "Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman" and "[the] sequined gaggle of mantled goslings streamed past me." Mitchell, with typical impenitence, even invents a whole new dialect ("A yarnin' is more delish with broke-de-mouth grinds") for a race in the future. The propulsive zing of his sentences and the unexpected U-turn of his narrative give added fuel...
...master at turning ideology--or the lack of it--into something inspiring, Noonan has plenty to do. Republicans watched the Democrats mount an almost pitch-perfect middle-of-the-road convention in Boston and are wondering how they can match it. Although Noonan was not recruited by the White House ("She broke down the door," says a Bush supporter), top Bush aides telephoned her last week to welcome her aboard...
...Setting the Record Straight Naval Maneuvers ? The short article "But in the Book ..." that accompanied our story on the film Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World [Nov. 24] compared the movie with the novels on which it was based and stated that "the novel is set in the War of 1812." The movie, however, combines two books, the first in the series, Master and Commander, which begins in 1800, and the 10th, The Far Side of the World, set during...