Word: proteans
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...teenage boys that there's enough gaudy action in the classic cartoon format to keep them happy. This space-traveler version of Treasure Island--replete with flying galleons and intergalactic pirates--splashes lavish special effects on a colorful palette without forfeiting attention to character detail. Example: the movie's protean robot as voiced by Martin Short is the most complex, delirious cartoon sideman since Robin Williams' Genie in Aladdin. Directors Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules) take a while to get their vehicle to sail and soar. But when it does, this Planet is a treasure...
...magnet for the dalliances of Bright Young Things and aged courtships alike. (How the latter is possible is beyond me, though, as the ambient volume is quite vexing to proper conversation.) But is this now really such an aberrant phenomenon? Voguish restaurants need to be this protean: People want old-fashioned quality and intimacy but also flash and flutter, a measured balance of familiarity and novelty, romantic hideaways secreted amidst convivial bustle. Sonsie is exactly that sprawling, radiant paradox. Who really gives a damn about the food anymore...
...Science and Nature, but it wouldn't be easy--scientifically or politically. Investigators at New York University have already located a malaria-resistance gene, but there's no guarantee that new bugs carrying it would have any evolutionary advantage over the old ones. Besides, parasite-host relationships are notoriously protean; as soon as resistance genes appear, the parasites develop counter-resistance. And there's always the possibility that the experiment could backfire, creating swarms of mutant mosquitoes that are even worse than the ones we have...
...like a Germanic Picasso." Nobody would hazard such a comparison today, but the magnificent exhibition of Beckmann's work, which opened in September at Paris' Centre Pompidou, is bound to remind viewers what that critic of an earlier age was getting at. Like his Spanish rival, Beckmann was a protean creator with an immense vitality, rich artistic vocabulary and strong sense of mission. If his art has less influence today than Picasso's, it may be because it remained so rooted in the concrete and very personal vision Beckmann had of the world around him. This major show...
...Kunzru is as adaptable as his protean protagonist, effortlessly evoking a lush Indian landscape and a romantic Oxford, switching from wit to weight without misstep. But something is lacking. Kunzru's hero has identities to spare but no soul, and in the end he crumbles away. Kunzru's writing suffers similarly: it is the work of a brilliant literary impressionist who hits every symbol, fulfills every gesture, while missing something essential beneath the shining surface. Perhaps he knows this. "In between each impression," Kunzru writes, "just at the moment when one person falls away and the next...