Word: realism
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...screening of Paranormal Activity in Times Square this past week didn't need gore effects to be scared witless. Yes, they knew it was only a movie - one that, like The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield and plenty others before it, used "found footage" to give a patina of realism to the fanciful events that were dreamed up by writer-director Oren Peli and are endured by actors Micah Sloat and Katie Featherston (using their real names). But when that door moved, the crowd's collective gasp just about sucked all the oxygen out of the theater...
Fortunately, the alternative to optimism is not pessimism, which can be equally delusional. What we need here is some realism, or the simple admission that, to paraphrase a bumper sticker, "stuff happens," including sometimes very, very bad stuff. We don't have to dwell incessantly on the worst-case scenarios - the metastasis, the market crash or global pandemic - but we do need to acknowledge that they could happen and prepare in the best way we can. Some will call this negative thinking, but the technical term is sobriety...
...seeks, Obama will agree (most likely minus a small Commander in Chief tax to show who's really in charge). But if McChrystal can't promise something resembling success by 2012, look for Obama to shift to a more modest strategy, with more modest goals, and paint it as realism rather than retreat...
...nations like the U.S. need to cut carbon emissions 25% to 40% by 2020 to keep global warming within what is hoped are safe limits. Politically, however, that seems out of question for Congress. Which is why Obama's speech at the U.N. last week was an exercise in realism, even if much of his audience wanted idealism...
First, we understand that you’re in the moviemaking, not fact-checking, business, so we’ll let our quibbles about realism slide. But here’s one scene—a conversation between Mark and the undergrads who accused him of stealing the idea of Facebook from them—that made us wince...