Word: scruff
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...clear line" style, he uses big, simple outlines with a minimum of chiaroscuro shading -- perfect for a bright, outdoorsy story. Rabagliati has a wonderful knack for caricature. Paul, for example, is distinguished mostly by thick brush strokes over each dot of an eye, and three vertical lines of "scruff" on his chin. "Clear Line" is nothing if not the most easy-to-read kind of cartooning in the world. Rabagliati lays out the pages with simple blocks that vary enough in size and shape to avoid eye fatigue. Copying his pages would be an instant university course...
...story is one of a young, brazen and destitute Eric Brockovich (Julia Roberts) who takes the American legal system by the scruff of its neck, moralizes it, defeats a corrupt and malicious business conglomerate and makes no small fortune for herself and others. At the film’s start, Brockovich is combing the classifieds to no particular avail—an image that becomes an important visual trope. Then, after incurring debilitating injuries from a car accident, Brockovich seeks the legal expertise of small claims attorney Ed Masry (Albert Finny), who fails her outright. Holding Masry personally responsible...
Ritchie probably doesn't appreciate the irony, but all this personal chaos neatly reflects his work. Before he met Madonna, Ritchie was the filmmaker who picked up London by the scruff of the neck with his wild-eyed debut, the brilliantly messy Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, a 1999 crime-caper comedy distinguished by rowdy camera work, shifting narrative and hysterical cartoon violence...
...McConaughey is the news here, dimples showing through the chin scruff, drawling out punch lines so you don't hear the rim shot, anchoring a film with enough weirdos to populate a Preston Sturges comedy. It's odd that this movie, not a star vehicle, should allow him to radiate star quality, and that's due in part to Howard's gift with actors. But it's more about this actor's sure connection with the character and the camera, and through them, the mass of moviegoers. Here he plays a man with the resources to handle unearned fame...
...indications there will be more scruff-of-the-neckmanship as Adler continues to preach and practice his doctrine. During a recent visit to Hampshire College in Massachusetts, Adler challenged a roomful of students with a dialogue on Plato. He put them through a rattling seminar that left the students exhausted and with some urgent questions hanging in the air. "That's the purpose of the seminar, to get you all worried," he told them happily. Worried they were, but Adler departed with his conviction undisturbed -- that pupils of any age can be educated, and the way to do that...