Word: spun
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...smell a setup - the old governmental double-cross - don't bother congratulating yourself. We're only halfway through Act 1 of Shooter, the latest movie in the conspiracy-theory genre. Filmmakers have spun some pretty decent political nightmares out of the fear of another Lincoln, McKinley or Kennedy assassination. The Manchurian Candidate, of blessed memory, established the format; The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor, Winter Kills, JFK, Conspiracy Theory and last year's BBC fake-umentary Death of a President all ran cunning variations on it. Shooter, written by Jonathan Lemkin from Stephen Hunter's novel Point...
...rale des Eaux, which evolved into Veolia, was born in 1853 when the progressive councilors of Emperor Napoleon III granted a group of investors the concession to provide water to the city of Lyon. It was such a hit on the Paris stock market that the company soon spun off its own bank, Société Générale. Competing bank Crédit Lyonnais parried in 1880 with the creation of Lyonnaise des Eaux, which is the core of Suez's water business today. Though the direct links to those banks no longer exist, both companies have been key players...
...chairman Jean-Marie Messier moved Compagnie Générale des Eaux full steam into the media business, but his empire cracked after a high-gloss purchase of Seagram to form Vivendi Universal. After Messier's ignominious fall in 2002 in a morass of debt, the environmental-services businesses spun off and dropped the tainted name Vivendi to become Veolia...
Humor has long been a sacred political tool. News can be spun or deliberately falsified. Books can be burned. Opposition parties can be marginalized. But the power of laughter can never be completely eradicated. Laughter, like murder, will out the tyrants, the hypocrites, the liars, and any others who abuse publicly-entrusted power. From Aristophanes’ mockery of the Athenian city-state to Bulgakov’s comic portrayal of Communist Russia, satire has, throughout history, allowed political dialogue to escape the bog of slippery words and violent duress. This happens because despite half-truths and full-spins, something...
...theatrical megahit of 1848, A Glance at New York, was the first play to feature rowdy working-class characters and street vernacular. It spun off sequels so quickly--several within a year or so, produced all over the country--that it's hard not to see it as a forerunner of the broadcast entertainment series...