Word: protagonists
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Shrek”)—immediately calls to mind an idealized 1950s America. White picket fences and pink-lipsticked Stepford alien wives make up the charming atmosphere of their small-town utopia. The film acquires all the makings of a sci-fi romantic comedy when Lem, the teenage protagonist voiced by Justin Long (of Mac commercial and “He’s Just Not That Into You” fame), reveals his crush on Neera (Jessica Biel). But their budding romance is complicated when American astronaut Chuck Baker (voiced by Dwayne “The Rock?...
...Some bloggers have wondered if it isn't simply in the French blood to root for an underdog taking on authority figures. Generations of French children have been enamored with traditional Guignol puppet shows, in which the protagonist, Guignol, fights with a rotten, bumbling policeman. The nation is also obsessed with the comic-book hero Asterix, a puny but cunning Gaul warrior who always gets the best of Julius Caesar's Roman armies despite being overmatched and outnumbered. (Read "Asterix at 50: A French Comic Hero Conquers the World...
...Judge me, you bitch!” yells Test Subject #20 at the female protagonist of “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.” Played earnestly by John Krasinski—who also directs the movie—Test Subject #20 (real name: Ryan) is just one of many confused and impetuous males to find themselves uncomfortably put on the spot by Ivy League graduate student named Sara. Krasinski’s eponymous adaptation of a 1999 short story collection by the late David Foster Wallace takes the blunt emotional starkness of the written interviews and puts...
...American Casino” accelerates with a systematic authority usually provided by a protagonist or a narrator. With this technique, the Cockburns outline how disturbingly far-reaching the consequences of the financial crisis—both direct and indirect—have become. High rates of foreclosure, repossession of property, and declarations of bankruptcy in minority communities lead to the increasing devastation of American neighborhoods, creating a thriving environment for crime and drugs. People then leave such neighborhoods in droves, draining the community’s equity and decreasing investors’ interest...
Auster’s concern is in the self-conscious depiction of the confusion of his characters; digging through books and words and letters to find truth, to find something—to find themselves. The protagonist of “Invisible,” Adam Walker, does just this; he looks for himself in Paris and looks at himself in letters. His quest is one of identity, but strangely, Auster’s almost simplistic prose leaves Walker as effervescent and fleeting as the novel itself...