Word: towards
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...bizarre, absurd, or utterly inane things that manage to find their way into the 100 minutes that comprise it. Instead, Von Trier seems satisfied with a set of auteuristic half-measures intended to flummox or thwart critical impingement. When Willem Dafoe’s unnamed therapist-husband character exclaims toward the end of his wife’s treatment, “You don’t have to understand me, just trust me!” it may as well be Von Trier’s claim for the entire film. But the gesture backfires, and instead...
...first half of the film is essentially a horror film’s buildup toward dramatic tension, and it’s done effectively: eerily lit time-lapse nature footage punctuated by waves of white noise and color-saturated, slow-motion shots create a nightmarish atmosphere for the carnage to unfold in. The alternation between handheld and dollied camera is seamless, and Von Trier even experiments with lenses in the former case, making for an especially distorted register in some of the film’s most intense moments. But finding the natural extreme of a career that counts...
...closer to the doors of the refugee registration center in Dera Ismail Khan, on the edge of the tribal areas in northwest Pakistan. As time slips by, so does their restraint. Waving angry fists with one hand and clasping their documents with the other, the group of men heaves toward the doors. Police officers on duty scatter the unruly crowd with forceful swings of their long bamboo sticks...
...ease its task in South Waziristan, the army has sought to isolate what remains of Baitullah Mehsud's network by striking arrangements with such unsavory groups. Most notably, it has revived non-aggression pacts with two powerful militant leaders from the rival Wazir tribe. As the army advances toward the Baitullah Mehsud network's strongholds from three different directions, Mullah Nazir in western South Waziristan and Hafiz Gul Bahadur in North Waziristan are facilitating its movements. Troublingly for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, both groups still mount cross-border attacks there. To the east, Turkistan Bhittani, a militant leader...
...held that Iran is playing for time, testing the limits of international political resolve, and hamstrung by internal political divisions. There's a measure of truth to these claims. But more important, the reason that Iran and the West are struggling over an agreement envisaged as a first step toward greater cooperation is that the two sides don't share a common destination...