Word: austen
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...curiously lyrical quality about them. They're full of literary touches and evocative phrases--the Master Chief travels in a spaceship called the Pillar of Autumn. The Halo universe is rich in lore--gamers love to be there the way some people love to pretend they're in Jane Austen novels. The action isn't nonstop; instead it includes dramatic beats and even moments of melancholy solitude, with Romantic weather effects and sublime vistas and soaring Gregorian chants. The game has a moody, Wagnerian quality--the Master Chief is dwarfed by towering alien architecture that recalls Piranesi. Halo takes itself...
...darkness, the possibility of degradation, that makes his people (and perhaps their creator) feel alive. Most modern visitors are content to portray the contemporary subcontinent as a bright and shining Silicon Valley East. Many Indian novelists sit within the cozy traditions laid down by Charles Dickens and even Jane Austen. Theroux is the rare writer to see that the fascination, the power of India today, lies in the commute between the two. His characters begin in manicured, air-conditioned places, but it is the clammy grasp of desire, the smells and the slippery deals of the back alleyways, that really...
...couple is nearly driven apart by their wacky priest's marriage-prep course; I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, in which Adam Sandler pretends to marry his firefighter buddy for health-insurance reasons; No Reservations, in which two competitive chefs fall in love; and Becoming Jane, in which Jane Austen has to choose between love and proper behavior. Coming in September is Good Luck Chuck, in which every girl Chuck sleeps with goes on to marry the next guy she meets. All of them, except the Austen, are what's known in the romance-novel business as HEAs (happily-ever...
...ruling decorum of their historical moment. They encourage in us a kind of smugness, a sense that if they were only more psychologically more hip and open (as we are), their lives would be more fully human, a little less cartoonish. These films therefore miss much of Austen's satirical edge - and much of her gently spoken toughness of mind and spirit...
...would rather have seen a movie about a woman gripped by a frustrated passion to create than a frustrated passion for a really cute guy. I'll stipulate that in Austen's time spinsterhood was a fate to be strenuously avoided. And being a woman writer was by no means an easy path either. Yet, she embraced it, and the immortal results more than justify a hard choice this film never really explores...