Word: usual
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...remember having a discussion with Andy Warhol," he recalls, "and I said, 'As far as I'm concerned, more people watch the news than anything else. To me, news is pop art.' And Andy agreed." In the decades since, Gittoes, 56, has pushed that concept beyond the usual 15 minutes of fame...
This year, amid flaring tempers and the usual personal politicking, the Undergraduate Council (UC) eked out a pocketful of notable successes. By year’s end, many of the UC’s activism goals had been reached, and the Council succeeded in restructuring itself to better serve its constituents.Still, the year began less than swimmingly. September’s general elections saw a low turnout not only of voters, but also of candidates; in a few Houses, there were more open positions on than there were candidates to fill them. Inadequate publicity was largely to blame...
...tracking shot through the cemetery in a Spanish village, as dozens of widows polish the tombstones of their late husbands. Among the mourners is Raimunda (Penélope Cruz, in a performance of great strength and ferocity), scrubbing down the grave of her mother Irene (Carmen Maura). With his usual taste for bizarre but plausible narrative twists, Almodóvar manages, in the first 40 minutes, to get a corpse in the freezer and a ghost under the bed. And he's just getting started, since nearly everyone in Volver has a dreadful family secret she is keeping from someone...
...film is written by Luc Besson, the darkly innovative--sometimes too much so--director of films like La Femme Nikita, and directed by longtime cameraman Pierre Morel. Raffaelli and Belle are veteran stuntmen, and their scenes are overcranked--150 frames a second instead of the usual 24--with the pace then slowed down in postproduction to achieve an extraordinarily graceful effect. When they fight, which is often, the editing is superb, with the cuts landing precisely on action and reaction. It's amazing how these simple devices, used intermittently in other films, energize District B13. The film never pauses...
...Cannes Festival, the Riviera showplace for art films and movie glamour, had a Hollywood accent this year as the host to world premieres of The Da Vinci Code and X-Men: The Last Stand. But its usual fare is provocative or perplexing films from top directors. Three of the attention-grabbing entries: Volver Pedro Almodóvar blends ghost story, revenge drama and all-girl comedy in a tale of courageous, if loco, sisterhood. Lovely Penélope Cruz and spectral Carmen Maura merit laurels, maybe Oscars...