Word: harshness
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...only sure consequence of this war is that Chechnya will be destabilized for years and possibly decades to come. Perhaps the West can serve a useful role when the fighting has ended in advising or reconstruction. Regardless, for the corpses of Russian conscripts and Chechen civilians mouldering amidst the harsh beauty of the Caucasus, this war has been worth very little...
John Irving's rural sprawl of a novel becomes, in his screenplay, a small epic with subtle strengths. The setting is harsh--a Maine orphanage in the early '40s, with war and sexual abuse looming--but the mood is warm and precise, as a flinty, laudanum-addicted doctor (the excellent Michael Caine) tutors his brightest charge (Tobey Maguire, the most watchful of young actors) to be his protege. Hallstrom, here as in My Life as a Dog and What's Eating Gilbert Grape, lets the characters carry the story without allowing the actors to push too hard. This...
...shockingly violent incident involving Lucy changes everything. Suddenly Lurie is doubly disgracedfor his failure as a father to help his own daughter and for his abuse of the child-like student. Luries reaction to the incident is the opposite of Lucys. She resigns herself to living in the harsh, concrete realities of the present without resorting to any form of escape. She seems to accept the violence done to her and Petruss encroachment on her land as a kind of indirect punishment for the historical wrongs committed by her race. To Lurie, this is at first incomprehensible. He still needs...
...Sounds harsh...
...number of would-be viators has increased, the industry has gone into hard-sell mode, promising fail-safe, above-market returns. The harsh reality, though, is that investors are in some measure betting on the death of the sellers. If the person whose policy you buy dies in a year, it's a great investment; but if he lives five, it's a dud. "Profitability is related to the predictability of death, which has proved to be singularly unpredictable," says Bill McDonald, chief of enforcement for the California Department of Corporations, who thinks viaticals may need to be outlawed...