Word: portents
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Kepesh, at least for a time, has more spritzing fun with his minor celebrity life than Kingsley's does. The latter seems insufficiently surprised and confused by the turn his life takes. And Coixet has a tendency to linger on some of her scenes, giving them an unnecessary, darkly portentous quality. Some of this story's effectiveness derives from the fact that even severely threatened life often goes waywardly forward, immune to portent. There's also a non-Rothian reconciliatory note - a sort of emotional consolation prize - in Kepesh's relationship with his awful son - that I could have done...
...February, a Sinaloa operative was killed and another injured during a botched attempt to detonate a bomb outside a Mexico City police headquarters - a portent that the mafias may be poised to unleash the kind of frontal guerrilla assault on law enforcement seen in Colombia two decades ago. "Each year, the violence takes on distinct new dimensions," says Victor Clark Alfaro, a security expert at the Binational Human Rights Center in Tijuana. "It's like fighting guerrillas - it often defies understanding...
...There is, to begin with, the film?s score by Hollywood composer Danny Elfman, which would pass virtually without notice in a fictional melodrama, but which here rings and thunders with portent. These are accompanied by sound effects of dubious provenance. Then there are the inserts, like the famous deck of playing cards, carrying pictures of Saddam Hussein and his leading henchmen, which was distributed to American troops in Iraq, Images of some of these cards, very handsomely photographed against black, fly artfully, abstractly across the screen in a manner that is distinctly at odds with the essential grubbiness...
...example, at this year's Frankfurt book fair to promise that his team "would continue to be an instrument for Catalan culture." But his activism, coupled with Catalonia's demands for increased autonomy, has provoked conflicts with political conservatives who view the team's cultural involvement as one more portent of Spain's disintegration. Tuesday's declaration was no exception. "Barcelona is a bilingual city, and the team should reflect that," says a spokesperson for the Catalan branch of the Popular Party, which has protested the decision." Laporta is trying to bring Catalonia into conflict with Spain...
...universities did not so regularly insist on pushing the envelope with radical and often anti-American politics, perhaps their speech and actions would not deserve careful and critical scrutiny. But, if Mr. Hunter’s legislation is a portent of things to come, perhaps this is—like so many of our own grade-school pedagogues had warned—a lesson better learned the hard...