Word: cliched
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...Naisbitts posit eight future developments for China; none are insightful. There's "Crossing the River by Feeling the Stones," which meant something when Deng Xiaoping uttered this maxim of pragmatic, step-by-step reform, but has become little more than a cliché three decades on. "Emancipation of the Mind" also looks tired after an entire generation of Chinese has grown up with an openness unimaginable to their parents...
...stories too formulaic, the messages too spoon-fed. Donald Margulies' new Broadway offering, Time Stands Still, to take a typical example, won warm praise from most critics, but I found its alternately jokey and sanctimonious portrayal of a photojournalist and her war-correspondent boyfriend one giant media-friendly cliché. And I had to laugh at New York Times critic Ben Brantley's praise of Next Fall, Geoffrey Nauffts' new comedy-drama about a gay couple at odds over religion, as "that genuine rara avis, a smart, sensitive and utterly contemporary New York comedy...
...Bridging East and West The cliché about actors with great screen presence is that they always seem so much smaller in real life. Khan is the opposite. When he's in a scene on film, it's almost impossible not to watch him - but in person the effect is magnified, not diminished. He is taller and better looking than you expect from his common-man roles, and he has a way of subtly yet firmly controlling the environment around him. He doesn't need a big, pushy entourage to do it. When I meet him on the roof...
...cliché that sport imitates life is a stretch. But sport does reveal what makes a winner. Above everything else - talent, training, luck - it's tenacity, like that shown at the Australian Open by tennis players Li Na and Zheng Jie. They made history by being the first Chinese, indeed the first Asians, to take half the semifinal places in a Grand Slam singles event. It was irrelevant whether the two would progress further in the tournament - their feat was already a huge achievement in a game long dominated by the West. Now the smart money is on China displaying...
Send in the teen clichés. Alvin (voiced by Justin Long) joins the football team and wins a game; Simon (Matthew Gray Gubler) gets a toilet swirlie from the jock bullies; Theodore (Jesse McCartney), fretting that his brother act is close to breakup, runs away from home and gets menaced by an eagle at the zoo. There's also a musical-talent sing-off that pits the little guys against a female trio of chipmunks, the Chipettes, laboring under the management of evil Ian Hawke (David Cross), the villain from the first movie...