Word: sword
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...potential for good. Although the hobbit hero Frodo may have failed to resist the temptation of the magic Ring, it is the slithery Gollum--thought to be nothing more than a nuisance--who ultimately destroys the Ring. Tolkien presents these profound ideas in the guise of an old-fashioned sword-and-sorcery epic. But the characters are as real and human as we are. BLAIR HURLEY Newton, Mass...
...mightier than the sword, but these days it's facing some stiff competition from the personal computer. That's why Logitech created the IO Personal Digital Pen ($199), a new, cyborganic writing implement that bridges the otherwise mutually exclusive worlds of screen and paper. Here's how it works: the IO writes like an ordinary ballpoint pen, but it contains a computer chip that records and remembers every scribble. When you're through writing, the IO downloads your jottings to your PC, where you can either save them as pictures or use handwriting-recognition software to convert them to text...
Zhang Yimou sounds defensive when he speaks of Hero as "a genre piece." The implication is: just a genre piece, a diversion, a long sword fight played by grownups. Perhaps the director is thinking of his last purely frivolous work, the 1989 Codename Cougar, a goofy skyjack thriller that outfitted his severe star and muse at the time Gong Li in a tight stewardess uniform. If so, Zhang is underestimating both the power of the movie-epic form and his ability to inhabit and revive...
...Nameless has three main adversaries: Sky (Donnie Yen), a master martial artist he defeats in the film's first, superb battle scene; Broken Sword (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), a calligrapher who is as adroit with a brush as with a saber; and Flying Snow (Maggie Cheung), Broken Sword's soul mate. Flying Snow has a side skirmish of her own with Moon (Zhang Ziyi), Broken Sword's smitten apprentice. Loyalties are tested, alliances made and sundered. Death is the price for betrayal?of the King or the heart...
...Each image is ravishing: clouds rushing over low mountains; a sword point that slo-mo slices through drops of water; lovers curled into each other, sleeping under red silk; a sword fight in a grove of golden leaves that turn red, plum, magenta and fall like fat confetti; soldiers squatting in a circle, caked in clay; a gray landscape of dunes daubed with Cheung's turquoise gown...