Word: plot
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...then tearfully embraces his son (Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham). A group of 19th century peasants battle their Brit overlords in a game of cricket (Lagaan, nominated this year for an Oscar). A naive media star falls in love with a terrorist (many recent films have used this politically explosive plot device, including Mission Kashmir, for which Mehta collaborated on the script...
...midst of the starkest plot twists, everyone sings and dances. Virtually all Bollywood films are musicals. For 60 years, they have provided India with most of its hit songs (in effect, the movie industry is the music industry). And not just songs?immense production numbers. Dozens of chorus boys in leather and houris in saris frolic while the stars risk dislocating their shoulders and display '60s-style legwork not seen in the West since the Peppermint Lounge closed. The stars dance, but they don't sing. That's the job of "playback singers," unseen onscreen but famous...
...gather enough signatures for the initiative to appear on the ballot. My crack team of volunteers consisted of a failed stand-up comic, an ex-felon who spent the 1990s in California State Penitentiary (a reformed pimp and carjacker), and his girlfriend. While this alone could have provided the plot for a bad movie, to my amusement (and hassle), there was much more in store...
What makes Tomine's work difficult for some is the naturalism. He tells stories that feel more like short exposures of ordinary people's lives, rather than plot-heavy adventures or overt comedy. These stories don't begin and end so much as fade in and out. Tomine explores nuance of character as revealed by life's more typical crises: losing a job, having an annoying neighbor or flirting with someone you shouldn't. The best of the four tales in this collection, "Hawaiian Getaway," features Hillary Chan, a twenty-something child of Asian immigrants who loses...
...post-retirement gigs as consultants. Corruption is so thoroughly entrenched it masquerades as tradition, and it's no wonder that a rich kid like Kazuki grows up believing everything is negotiable. The adults in the novel aren't outraged as they come to suspect Kazuki of murder. Instead, they plot ways to use Hidetomo's death to their financial gain. The only characters that seem shocked at all are a low-level yakuza and an orphaned peer of Kazuki's, both of whom seem powerless in the face of their own realizations. Power, Kazuki realizes, is just another word...