Word: matchstick
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...smart set is obliged to deal with one of his victims, one on one, man to man. That is simply arranged: Pierre (Thierry Lhermitte), a publisher, is suddenly immobilized by a backache on the very night he has asked Francois (Jacques Villeret), an accountant who makes matchstick models of things like the Eiffel Tower and the Concorde, over for a drink before the fools' parade. Francois is more than eager to divert Pierre from his pain...
...Pignon manages to unravel almost every part of Bronchant's chic life, from his wife and mistress to his furnishings and fine wine. Yet the farce never becomes a simple enactment of poetic justice; no matter how much Veber paints Pignon as a really likeable, sweet guy who makes matchstick models of famous monuments such as the Eiffel Tower to numb his broken heart, he remains the idiot. All the misadventures he causes stem from his kindness and gratitude toward Bronchant. This is the awkward basis of the farce...
...easy to picture the 360-mile-long reservoir that will back up behind the planned dam, flooding more than 150,000 acres of land and forcing 1.3 million people to relocate to higher ground. The cranes on the site are hundreds of feet high, but they look like matchstick models until they are compared with the minute scale of the boats passing by on the river. This, then, is the size of China's dreams for the future--bigger and more ambitious than outsiders can imagine. Even within China, the dam has its opponents. But no one leaves Sandouping--resounding...
After Fujimori set the date for last week's assault, the army managed to smuggle at least 11 listening devices into the residence. Some were tiny, matchstick-size two-way microphones that allowed intelligence officers to communicate with the military and police commanders being held inside. The gizmos were carried into the building four days before the raid by intelligence agents posing as government doctors there to check on the hostages' health. The devices were supplied by the cia, according to the military official, and were concealed in personal items, like books, guitars and thermos bottles, that were supposedly sent...
...enormous strain on Miami, both financially and socially. Roughly 140,000 Anglo residents have fled in the past decade, largely in response to the city's growing Hispanic character. Some areas of the city today resemble the Third World, with the homeless and immigrants living under highways or in matchstick houses along canals...