Word: spirit
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...triumph over the forces of darkness that surround him - but only accidentally so. That's why we identify with him; if he is one of us, we know perfectly well that we wouldn't last a minute against all those men in black wielding highly advanced weaponry. In that spirit of genial fantasy, we permit out surrogate that utter self-confidence, that sublime sangfroid, with which with he cheerfully motors his way around and through disaster. He's what we would be - in our dreams - if we had any luck...
...master of the old-fashioned technique of special-effects makeup--in which spirit gum, plaster casts and armor work, not computer fiddling, do the trick--Winston wanted more than audiences' screams. Often he earned their sympathy, as in the baleful, soulful face and kitchen-cutlery fingers of Edward Scissorhands and the mandroid smoothness of the robo-gigolo in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. "I don't do special effects," Winston said. "I do characters...
...first, it was the family-friendly superheroes who made the leap to multiplexes, with the help of directors like Bryan Singer and Chris Nolan. Slowly, lesser-known comic books got a shot. Some, like Sin City and Hellboy, became modest box-office successes by adhering to the distinctive spirit of their creators. Others, like Road to Perdition and A History of Violence, attracted audiences with sophisticated stories that few people knew were derived from graphic novels...
...small, brilliant, edifyingly demented breed of special-effects makeup men. Not visual effects, you understand: these folks don't sit at computers and play with pixels, a technique that requires an actor to stand in front of a green screen and mime fear. They are old-fashioned craftsmen, using spirit gum and other medieval (and modern) applications to devise prostheses so horrid, so hand-made, they'd scare anyone on the set. In a tradition stretching back to silent-film star Lon Chaney, the SPFX makeup men, in essence, build scary masks. They make horror visible by sculpting...
...million, from $428 million the year before. "With the Olympics in Beijing, we want to make sure we do very well," says Hao Qiang, head of the Sports Ministry's competition-and-training department. "Otherwise, the public will be very disappointed that we did not display proper national spirit." It's a pricey endeavor: each of China's gold medals will cost the state upwards of $7 million, according to Bao Mingxiao, director of the Sports Ministry's Institute of Physical Science. At the Qingdao City Sports School, one of the country's top breeding grounds of Olympic athletes, principal...