Word: plotting
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...this epic rendering fails to lend vibrancy to the story of the first emperor of China's rise to power. All too predictably, The Emperor and the Assassin falls prey to the temptation of presenting sumptuous costumes and cast-of-thousands battle scenes at the expense of an engaging plot and well-developed characters...
...must decide between ambition and conscience. But though all the right ingredients are assembled, the equation somehow fails to add up. The complexity and tension inherent to the characters aren't played out to their full potential, resulting in a certain degree of dramatic sag. Without strong characterizations, the plot founders, and the focal trio is all too easily eclipsed by the bombastic military hullabaloo around them. The biggest problem is that Li Xuejian, for better or worse, gives a truly confused portrait of the emperor, alternating between unabashed cruelty and childish buffoonery. His emperor is conflicted and multifaceted...
...song itself tries to assert her "woman in me" mantra and it's not too bad. But a girl wearing a leopard print coat and hood in the desert? What was she thinking? The video's plot's pretty simple: Shania looks hot (I mean literally--she's gotta be overheated in that animal skin), she rejects like five different hitchhikers for no apparent reason (including a white boy who looks uncomfortable in his sheik outfit), and she ends the video without a ride, lonely and overdressed in the desert. The lyrics of the song wax poetic about needing...
...sets you free... Whatever keeps me in your arms/I wanna thank you for giving me time to breathe." There's some complexity there, right? (Bear with me. Just pretend there's some complexity.) But the video seems to be playing to a whole new set of lyrics. The plot? Christina and her posse strut into a room full of drooling guys, one of which is presumably her boyfriend. I say that he might be her boyfriend because when she walks in, one of his friends says, "Hey, your girl is here." In any case, Christina rejects his come-ons, giving...
...only to pay respect to the uniform excellence of the cast, but also to provide what are essentially the storylines of the film, since almost every scene unfolds as an extrapolation of character. Whereas previously, in Boogie Nights and the carefully-studied noir Hard Eight, Anderson relied upon plot twists and unforeseen complications to examine an unfamiliar socio-moral universe, Magnolia's characters are not gamblers or pornographers; they live in _our_ universe and don't require the same roughing up to be understood. It's obvious from the start that all of these individuals are in pain, and that...