Word: stark
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...President was visibly excited on the ride out to the airport and obviously engaged during the immense welcome ceremony the next day. The contrast between the swaggering born-again Texan and the cerebral Catholic scholar seems stark. Indeed, there is plenty to separate them, particularly their views of the Iraq war. But there is also much to unite them, especially at this moment in both their careers. They share a taste for straight talk and simple truths as weapons against doubt and denial: on stem-cell research, abortion and religious violence, they are brothers in arms. "We need your message...
...just not the hero type, clearly," swaggering billionaire weapons contractor Tony Stark explains to the press in the first of this summer's bumper crop of comic-book films, Iron Man, "with this laundry list of character defects and all the mistakes I've made, largely publicly." Stark, who by the way clearly [does] think he's the hero type, is played by another sort you might not associate with saving the planet: Robert Downey...
...Downey's return from the brink is a fighter's tale. Since getting clean in 2001, the man who was at one time referred to as the best actor of his generation and also (in Time) as a "stark reminder of the strangling power of addiction" has labored to show Hollywood that he deserves another chance. "He's somebody who's had it, lost it and now has it again, and it's like a pit bull who's got his jaws on a chew toy," says Iron Man director Jon Favreau. "Nothing will take this away from...
...Favreau lobbied to cast Downey as Stark, Iron Man's alter ego, when Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures wondered if a younger actor with a blander past would be a smarter marketing choice for a potential franchise. In Iron Man, Stark's convoy of humvees is attacked following a weapons demonstration. Insurgents hold him captive in a cave and demand that he build them a devastating weapon. Instead, Stark builds himself a suit of armor with a new sense of purpose. "Tony Stark goes through a bit of a moral reawakening in this movie," Favreau says-a character arc that...
...begin to see our neighbors in the Square as the nameless homeless, instead of people much like ourselves. We cease at last to be sympathetic to their misfortunes or interested in their lives, instead coming to ignore them outright. Finally, we participate in and endorse a culture of stark and impenetrable walls. But there is very little in reality dividing Macleod and me. I cannot forget that, for the most part, it is only happenstance that entitles me and my classmates to the warm quiet of the library and damns him to the cold. This revelation followed fast...