Word: manness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...predictable litany of sins committed by the film - that it is voyeuristic "poverty porn," that it is implausible and hackneyed, that it's a Western vision of India in which there is nothing but misery, filth and violence. (Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, which won last year's Man Booker literary prize, generated a similar round of complaints...
...flair for the macabre - in one scene, a man who has been tortured by Red Guards commits suicide by driving a nail through his skull - but there's humor in between the horror. Having made a fortune trading scrap, Baldy decides to launch a contest to find the country's most beautiful virgin. The "Inaugural National Virgin Beauty Competition" is a punchy spoof of the Beijing Olympics, complete with salivating sponsors, a city leveled and rebuilt for out-of-town guests and a contestant who wins by sleeping with the judges. Portraits of contemporary China are rarely sharper or more...
...Crazy Tonight," the rock star can't resist intruding with a lyric that first appeared as a pull quote in several of his magazine profiles ("The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear"). After a few albums of disciplined universality and lyrics everyone can relate to, the man has earned the right to sing his life, and plenty of people are interested in the thoughts of the philanthropic and famous. But the pleasures these moments provide are at best voyeuristic; they create distance between U2 and the average listener, while great pop - the kind this band used...
...song that seems to work on all the levels U2 intended is "Moment of Surrender." Clocking in at more than seven minutes and moving with the deliberate shuffle of a man wandering empty streets, it gives Bono a shot to channel Sinatra at his loneliest. You can hear an organ and a cello and a lot of other sounds that are hard to pinpoint, but they gradually converge into a heartbreaking melody as Bono stares into the reflection of an ATM and discovers he can no longer recognize his own face. As the tune fades out, he lets loose another...
...difference is that his original was far superior: a deceptively simple but ultimately smart lesson on coping with the inevitability of change. Here, the pensées are punier. A confused young Everyman journeys to the top of a mountain, where he is instructed by a wise old man given to restating the obvious ("Find and use the good that is hidden in the bad time"). The peaks and valleys of the title are the ups and downs of life that we all must master in our own way. Got it? Next time out, one hopes that the author...