Los Angeles is trying hard to throw off its reputation as an automotive city. But its public transport system needs reform
SOS Racisme described the event as “a mistake, even an abomination, because it wallows in ethnic separation, whereas anti-racism is a movement which seeks to go beyond race.”
For ten days I kept notes (after ten days we fast became ignorant habitués), with the idea of later being able to reconstruct my first impressions of Istanbul.
This Vietnamese-Mexican abomination shouldn't even exist it's so good.
Known as a second-generation Abstract Expressionist, Ms. Frankenthaler was married during the movement’s heyday to the painter Robert Motherwell, a leading first-generation member of the group. But she departed from the first generation’s romantic search for the “sublime” to pursue her own path.
The closed-door meeting illustrated a fundamental shift under way in the futures industry: financial firms, ordinarily loath to accept regulation, are now spearheading efforts for new oversight as they try to heal the black eye left by MF Global and the disappearance of $1.2 billion in its customers' money.
His reprimands were equally restrained. “Excuse me, Paolo,” he once inquired of a political lieutenant. “Are you by any chance insinuating that I’m a shit?”
"When facing poverty individuals enter a “scarcity mindset”. When focused on short-term survival, your decision-making ability is scrambled and your attention span narrowed. Long–term planning and the completion of peripheral, routine tasks is downgraded as the immediate future becomes the only focus."
Fear and Self-Loathing
By ALEXIS BURLING
School, relationships, popularity. Navigating life's uncertainties, the teenage girls in these novels are pushed to the brink.
Posner was outspoken about the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in bush v. gore, 531 U.S. 98, 121 S. Ct. 525, 148 L. Ed. 2d 388 (2000), where the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Florida Supreme Court could not constitutionally order a recount of thousands of votes for the 2000 presidential elections. In Breaking the Deadlock, Posner finds that the decision was abominable, but that the judgment was necessary to avoid a constitutional crisis.
abominable
(ə-bŏm'ə-nə-bəl)
adj.
- Unequivocally detestable; loathsome: abominable treatment of prisoners.
- Thoroughly unpleasant or disagreeable: abominable weather.
[Middle English abhominable, from Old French, from Latin abōminābilis, from abōminārī, to abhor. See abominate.]
abominably a·bom'i·na·bly adv.
abomination
əbɒmɪˈneɪʃ(ə)n/
noun
- a thing that causes disgust or loathing."concrete abominations masquerading as hotels"
- a feeling of hatred.
"a Calvinist abomination of indulgence"
wallow
ˈwɒləʊ/
verb
- 1.(chiefly of large mammals) roll about or lie in mud or water, especially to keep cool or avoid biting insects.
"there were watering places where buffalo liked to wallow"synonyms: loll about/around, lie about/around, tumble about/around, splash about/around; More
noun
- 1.an act of wallowing.
"a wallow in nostalgia" - 2.a depression containing mud or shallow water, formed by the wallowing of large mammals.
"a buffalo wallow"
abhor
tr.v., -horred, -hor·ring, -hors.
To regard with horror or loathing; detest: "The problem with Establishment Republicans is they abhor the unseemliness of a political brawl" (Patrick J. Buchanan).
[Middle English abhorren, from Latin abhorrēre, to shrink from : ab-, from; see ab-1 + horrēre, to shudder.]
abhorrer ab·hor'rer n.loathe (lōTH) pronunciation
tr.v., loathed, loath·ing, loathes.
To dislike (someone or something) greatly; abhor.
[Middle English lothen, from Old English lāthian.]
ther loath'er n.
Texas Oil Refinery Is Saudi Foothold
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
PORT ARTHUR, Tex. — The giant Motiva refinery is a strategic outpost for
Saudi Arabia’s global ambitions, although its one that the Saudis
appear loath to publicize.
One Loves It. One Loathes It. ‘That’s Life.’
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD and ALASTAIR MACAULAY
The New York Times critics Charles Isherwood (loved it) and Alastair Macaulay (loathed it) discuss their takes on Twyla Tharp’s “Come Fly Away.”
Essay
By MATT WEILAND
The long-forgotten magazine The Chicagoan epitomized the Jazz Age sound of Chicago, equal parts street tough and nightclub habitué.
habitué
noun [C] LITERARY
a person who regularly visits a particular place:
Habitués of this gentlemen's club are generally middle-aged, grey-haired and overweight.
To get a good idea of how the 19th-century Palermitan aristocracy lived, visit the Palazzo Mirto. Inside is a succession of sumptuously decorated rooms.
luxurious and showing wealth:
The celebrity guests turned up dressed in sumptuous evening gowns.
frosty
adjective
1 very cold, with a thin layer of white ice covering everything:
Be careful - the pavements are very frosty.
It was a cold and frosty morning.
2 If someone or their behaviour is frosty, they are unfriendly and not welcoming:
He gave me a frosty look.
The chairperson's plan received a frosty reception from the committee.
━━ a. 霜の降りる（ほど寒い）; 霜の降りた; 冷淡な; （頭髪が）しらがの.
| |||||
'Lust, Caution'
Is Sumptuous But
Frosty, Repetitive
Thriller Short on Thrills;
'Michael Clayton' Goes
From Bleak to Poignant
October 5, 2007; Page W1
'Michael Clayton' Goes
From Bleak to Poignant
October 5, 2007; Page W1
Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution," set in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation of China in World War II, grew -- and grew -- out of a short story by the late Eileen Chang. The story, about a young spy for the resistance and her intended victim, is remarkable for its complexity and density; it's almost freeze-dried, yet accessible to the imagination. In a few dozen pages Chang's narrative suggests the intricacies and ambiguities of sexual and political conquest, the shifting frontier between eroticism and love, and the paradox of theatrical performance, a process of becoming by way of pretending. The 157-minute film, in Mandarin with English subtitles, expands on all those themes, and adds explicit sex scenes that have earned an NC-17 rating. Sumptuously produced and beautifully visualized, this is a filmmaker's meditation on the culture that nurtured him. As a piece of entertainment, however, it's hoist by its own paradox -- an almost thrill-free thriller that seems seductive, yet stays resolutely remote.
![[Wei Tang]](https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/HC-GK779_Tang_20071004185950.jpg)
The heroine, Wong Chia-Chih (an impressive screen debut by Tang Wei), is a movie fan with a gift for acting that she discovered as a college student; since her story resonates with "Notorious" and "Suspicion," we're treated to fleeting Hitchcock clips. (The plot is also similar to Paul Verhoeven's recent, and shamelessly entertaining, "Black Book.") Pressed into service by young activists who loathe the puppet government installed by Japan, Wang pretends to be Mrs. Mak, the wife of a Hong Kong businessman, insinuates herself into the household of a brutal government official, Mr. Yee, and seduces him in order to set him up for assassination.
He's played by Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, the Hong Kong actor who was so hypnotically soulful in "In the Mood for Love." This time his character conceals the existence of a soul as best he can -- the caution of the title is just as important as the lust. What he soon reveals of himself is a sexual ferocity that befits a man who does the lethal bidding of a brutal government. But Mr. Yee is not only a brute, and Wong Chia-Chih is not only an apprentice pretender trying to pull off a layered role -- that of an ambitious, materialistic adulteress who falls victim to her own passion. Human interactions, the film says -- and by extension international relations -- are more tangled than we can know or imagine.
![[Lust, Caution]](https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/images/WK-AK201_tv3_20071004182617.jpg) |
| Tony Leung Chiu-Wai and Tang Wei play the devious romantic couple in Ang Lee's "Lust, Caution." |
There's so much to ponder in the screen adaptation by Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus that I kept wondering, while watching, why I found the action so uninvolving, and the rhythms so repetitive. The answer for me lies in the movie's relentlessly somber, self-serious tone. "Lust, Caution" is obviously not an occasion for frivolity; it's about urgent purposes, closed-off characters and fateful events. Still, some emotional variety would have been welcome, at least around the edges. Take that cell of revolutionary students, the college kids who draft Wong Chia-Chih for her dangerous mission. They are, in reality, foolish dabblers and screw-ups who might have become overtly comic characters in an early movie by Godard. Not here, though. Apart from a couple of amusing lines, they're deadly earnest and quite lifeless.
And the heroine's motivation is playful at first; at least that's what we're told, if not shown. Like many shy, introspective people, she discovers that acting turns her on to the point of personal liberation. Indeed, the performer's high is essential to the film's equation. Mr. Yee, too, is liberated by role-playing -- his own as well as hers. Yet there's rarely a trace of zest in what she does, and no relief from the impassive face he turns to the world, except in their sexual encounters, which are less erotic than athletic, acrobatic or even geometric in their graphic intensity. A freeze-dried story has been only partially defrosted.
zest (EXCITEMENT) noun [S or U]
enthusiasm, eagerness, energy and interest:
It's wonderful to see the children's zest for life.
He approached every task with a boundless zest.
The recording captures the zest of this live concert performance.
zestful
adjective
[with object]
enthusiasm, eagerness, energy and interest:
It's wonderful to see the children's zest for life.
He approached every task with a boundless zest.
The recording captures the zest of this live concert performance.
zestful
adjective
insinuate
Pronunciation: /ɪnˈsɪnjʊeɪt/
Definition of insinuate
verb
沒有留言:
張貼留言