Word: today
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...world routines. (Blackwood has "set his sights on America." Don't they all?) Even more surprising is that Robert Downey Jr. doesn't manage to overcome all that. In theory, he seems like such a good casting choice for a new Holmes; no actor of the appropriate age working today seems more quick-witted or verbally agile. Holmes was a late-19th-century bad boy, known for dipping into the cocaine here and there, and Downey Jr., reformed though he may be, is still our favorite bad boy. To imagine him in a different Sherlock Holmes movie, one darker, smarter...
That was a very distant time. Today, film directors prefer to make movies based on old movies, not plumb the pools of their own artistry. Hollywood looks back, not inward. Nine, directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago) and scripted by Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) and Michael Tolkin (The Player), wants to do both: engage in a little navel-gazing while summoning the glories of Italian cinema in the Cinecitta era of the 1960s. Find a role for Sophia Loren! Cast Kidman as an amalgam of Claudia Cardinale and Anita Ekberg! And, just as anachronistic, have people sing their troubles...
...church boxes and the servant presents definitely existed, although historians disagree on which practice inspired the holiday. But Boxing Day's origins aren't especially important to modern-day Brits - Britain isn't known for its religious fervor, and few people can afford to have servants anymore, anyway. Today's Boxing Day festivities have very little to do with charity. Instead, they revolve around food, football (soccer), visits from friends, food and drinking...
...return to Aceh today is a heartening experience. Billions of dollars in reconstruction funds have poured into the province, and it shows. Banda Aceh, where the tsunami killed 60,000 people - a fifth of the population - is now bustling and prosperous. There is a new hospital and airport, and tourist shops selling I-love-Aceh T-shirts. (See where the next five big earthquakes will...
...constitutional challenges to the Mexico City statute as baseless. The law, says assemblyman Victor Romo, one of its advocates, is the culmination of a struggle for better marriage rights over hundreds of years. "For centuries unjust laws banned marriage between blacks and whites or Indians and Europeans," he said. "Today all barriers have disappeared...