Word: twist
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There's no surer sign of a fading soap opera than a lurid plot twist. Unlike their glossy American counterparts, British soaps traditionally aim for stolid social realism, depicting ordinary folk pursuing humdrum lives. Now dwindling audiences are spurring producers to unleash implausible killers and gothic disasters on their workaday protagonists. Take the hapless citizens of Walford, a fictional London borough that is the setting for EastEnders, one of Britain's top-rated soaps. Recent episodes have seen a troubled adolescent kidnap his estranged stepfather, chip-shop owner Ian Beale, to exact revenge for his psychopathic mother's death...
...movement, reminiscent of opera, evoked a sense of tragedy. Where Goto’s violin used to be light, melancholy began to weigh down on the instrument.In the third movement—Allegro spirituoso—Goto leaped back into his element, holding the audience on edge with every twist of the bow. He employed Paganini’s own invention, “ricochet” bowing (where the bow ricochets across the strings to produce swift and un-slurred notes), with the utmost effect, swimming through 20 notes in a matter of a few seconds. Then, violinist...
...storyline of Falwal’s daughter and her relationship with the young radical will likely upset some viewers, though it is undoubtedly the high point of the film. Whether or not one has the patience to emotionally invest in these characters will determine whether the twist that ends their story is meaningful or simply another case of unnecessary cinematic sleight of hand. Regardless, this storyline stands out: The viewers are not told exactly what to think, and the motivations of the characters are not so black and white...
...Mario Capecchi is the one with the spiral-staircase story: the starving, homeless Italian street kid who found his way to America, to Harvard, to Utah, ever the refugee, before finally arriving at eternal glory and the Nobel Prize. It's in many ways a familiar tale, Oliver Twist meets Albert Einstein, the pilgrim who comes to the promised land expecting, as he says, "the roads to be paved in gold. What I found actually was just opportunity." But his story also has enough nice serrated edges to challenge our theories about genes and genius and what really makes...
...accept her demanding and often lonely role as Queen of England. The camera often peers down on her from above, showing her in the middle of a huge hall, dwarfed by the centuries of history about her. The film’s biggest disappointment lies, ironically, in the plot twist that generated the most buzz—the relationship between Elizabeth and Sir Walter Raleigh, adventurer and settler of the New World. His first appearances in court are filled with flirtatious tension, mystery, and bravado, and Elizabeth becomes attracted to his otherworldliness to the point of envy. Yet Owen?...