Word: persona
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...with his view of men as weak connivers and women as the wise life force; with the trickery of art (in his dark, delightful comedy The Magician); with his studies of sexual alienation (The Silence), his inside investigations of minds tumbling into madness (Through a Glass Darkly) or muteness (Persona); with his trips into the poignant past (Wild Strawberries); especially with his long battle with God, to which he devoted an entire trilogy. Bergman made anguish sexy, emotional neediness a turn-on. We had no reservation in naming him the world's greatest filmmaker...
Rogen might seem a spawn of Woody Allen, but he's closer to Cheech and/or Chong with a bar mitzvah. He hasn't the Woody whine and inferiority complex. Like the Martin stage persona, the characters these guys play don't have self-esteem problems; indeed, that is their problem. The only star who simmers with comic angst is Stiller. He's the put-upon loser, a jocular Job, in films like There's Something About Mary and Night at the Museum, when he's not taking roles as the pompous, uptight bad guy (in, say, Dodgeball) or the preening...
...stars have to be distinguished from the previous generation: the hyperactive chameleon-comedians Robin Williams, Jim Carrey and Eddie Murphy. Ferrell doesn't dazzle by slipping into a zillion roles (as he did on Saturday Night Live). He found a persona the audience likes--the lanky, ungainly goof who thinks he's a supreme jock--and he mostly sticks with it. He knows the mass audience wants its stars only in their familiar mode. When they try going upmarket--Ferrell in Stranger Than Fiction, Sandler in Spanglish--the fan base deserts them...
...hunts - "for small varmints, if you will"). And there's the for-junkies-only joke, resurrecting a six-month-old charge that Romney's landscaping company employed illegal immigrants from Guatemala. As an added bonus, the riff could also be a slyly self-deprecating poke at the exact persona Team Romney seeks to remind voters of: The angry old man, yelling at neighborhood kids to "Get off my lawn...
...It’s disappointing,” says Climenko Professor of Law Charles J. Ogletree Jr., a leading civil rights advocate. “Harvard should certainly strive to achieve meaningful diversity in every aspect of its public persona. Given the success of so many other elite institutions, the lower figures are astonishing. It’s a wake-up call...