Word: tropes
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...been the inspiration for countless remakes and rip-offs. (Romero's latest film, Survival of the Dead, may go direct to video.) The Crazies - about people whose minds are poisoned by the town's water supply - wasn't quite so trailblazing. It built on that potent science-fiction trope, the takeover of personality by an alien entity, that dates back to Philip K. Dick's 1954 story "The Father-Thing," in which an eight-year-old suspects that his father's not quite right and finds a menacing replicant in the garage. A year later, Jack Finney fleshed...
...acting is similarly excellent. DiCaprio, who continues to grow as an actor under Scorsese’s tutelage, turns in one of his more powerful performances. Though his character may seem to fall into the standard trope of a hardened hero plauged by a traumatic past, DiCaprio effectively portrays Daniels’ spiraling instability as his perception of the world grows more uncertain. Meanwhile, Kingsley and the rest of the hospital staff exude a menacing solidarity that complements the film’s sinister audiovisual elements perfectly...
...there is a great irony here: villagery is a trope more applicable to those making the accusation than to those being snarked upon. The left-wing blogosphere, at its worst, is a claustrophobic hamlet of the well educated, less interested in meaningful debate than the "village" it mocks. (At its best, it is a source of clever and well-informed anti-Establishment commentary.) Indeed, it resembles nothing so much as that other, more populous hamlet, the right-wing Fox News and Limbaugh slum. Hilariously, as we stagger from one awful decade into the next, there has been a coagulation...
When Jimi Hendrix smashed his guitar in the 1960s, it was clear he was attacking the Establishment. When a Muslim punk rocker smashes up a guitar outside an American Muslim convention, the now-standard rock 'n' roll trope gains a few new meanings. These young punks are taking on every establishment going: Muslim, American and Muslim American. "In this so-called war of civilizations, we're giving the finger to both sides," says the godfather of the Muslim punk movement, Michael Muhammad Knight, in Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam, a new documentary by Pakistani-Canadian director Omar Majeed...
...trade-off we make for low-priced goods-often cheap simply means cheap. Shell likes to tell the story of how she once bought three blenders in quick succession; the flimsy blades were no match for the ice that goes into smoothies. When "low cost" is the marketing trope we most respond to, quality easily falls by the wayside. And that state of affairs, Shell concludes based on the response to her book, bothers no one as much as the less affluent people who inexpensive goods are supposed to benefit the most. They can't always afford a replacement...