Word: portraits
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...their full potential, resulting in a certain degree of dramatic sag. Without strong characterizations, the plot founders, and the focal trio is all too easily eclipsed by the bombastic military hullabaloo around them. The biggest problem is that Li Xuejian, for better or worse, gives a truly confused portrait of the emperor, alternating between unabashed cruelty and childish buffoonery. His emperor is conflicted and multifaceted, for sure --but lacking the visible development from ambitious commoner to dangerously monomaniacal ruler, he also lacks the necessary pathos to be anything more than a caricature. Zhang Fengyi fares better as the sympathetic Jing...
...faithfulness to the surreal irregularity and aimlessness of life is what distinguishes it from its nearest relative, Robert Altman's Short Cuts. Where that film found black social satire in forcing its inhabitants' to collide in a series of chance events, Magnolia opts for an intimate and studied portrait of each of its nine focal characters by allowing their suffering to be its own dramatic vehicle. Nonetheless, Anderson is a cinephile, and he is indebted here, as in all of his work, to other distinctive and established filmmakers, Altman especially. This film bears some obvious resemblance to Short Cuts...
...taste changed and developed; in due course he would acquire a number of Cezannes, including the mighty Self-Portrait of 1878-80, solid as a Provencal mountain, which he perceived to be a sort of midpoint between El Greco and Picasso. In the same way, his early dislike of Matisse didn't stop him from eventually buying one of the greatest and harshest of all Matisses, the Studio, Quai St.-Michel...
...portrait you gave us of republican presidential candidate John McCain is of a man fully alive [CAMPAIGN 2000, Dec. 13]. His heroic military past is astonishing. McCain is at times a statesman and crusader and at others a family man, raconteur or stand-up comic. His mixture of humanity, honor and humor is unique to the present political scene. He wins you over with his personality and his message. OLIVER HARPER Phoenix, Ariz...
...flesh-and-blood Gandhi was a most unlikely saint. Just conjure up his portrait: a skinny, bent figure, nut brown and naked except for a white loincloth, cheap spectacles perched on his nose, frail hand grasping a tall bamboo staff. This was one of the century's great revolutionaries? Yet this strange figure swayed millions with his hypnotic spell. His garb was the perfect uniform for the kind of revolutionary he was, wielding weapons of prayer and nonviolence more powerful than guns...