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It takes viewing only a handful of the many British films that have made the trip across the pond to the warmth of American theaters in recent years to see that they have quite a few things in common. From The Full Monty to Calendar Girls, Mrs. Henderson Presents to Notes On A Scandal, these movies seem to have cornered the film market on understated performances by actors swathed in heavy overcoats and staid woolens, and are filled to overflowing with chalky gray colors, pop-driven montages, knighted actors, and --- the quality most commonly derided by Americans of the Bruckheimer school -- slow, regal pacing. Venus, the newest of these imports, can check off each of these boxes multiple times. Critics seeking sharper wit away from Hollywood often decry American films as formulaic -- well, the British have their formula, as well, it appears, at least in the movies they rush to U.S. box offices -- and Venus is just such a film.
There's an argument that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon gave American audiences a taste of a martial arts that took the Bruce Lee school of fighting and gave it swords while taking away gravity, and that it did more harm than good to the Chinese film industry. From Hero to The House of Flying Daggers to, now, The Curse of the Golden Flower, Chinese film has become mainly synonymous for outlandish characters and lavish fight scenes.
As an actor, Clive Owen has been known since his breakthrough in Mike Nichols' Croupier as a laconic, hangdog presence adept at playing character roles that hinted at leading actor status -- tempestuous in Closer yet too laid-back for his mythic role in King Arthur. As a director, Alfonso Cuaron has been known since his own breakthrough road movie Y Tu Mamá También as a director who riffs on sexuality and sex itself, taking inspiration from the illogical things it makes us do -- evident in the steamy scenes of Y Tu Mamá También but toned down for his Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban. In other words, both have always held unrealized potential beneath the surface, waiting to bubble over in a way that would challenge Hollywood conventions -- the low-key leading man, the movie with sex on the brain.
There is no crucifixion in Apocalypto. And, despite the ardent wishes of publicist stunt junkies, Mel Gibson does not make an appearance. Oh, and he never mentions God. At least not a monotheistic one.
Hollywood hits close to home for most directors -- usually much too close to satirize, especially when a paycheck is on the line. Though some have attempted it before (the late iconoclast Robert Altman's The Player stands as probably the best contender) veteran mockumentarian Christopher Guest has decided to shed the documentary format that served him so well in Best in Show and A Mighty Wind and tackle Hollywood his way -- by making his most average movie since Waiting for Guffman.
The Queen opens with Helen Mirren's face -- a half-smile, a slight crease of an upturned cheek, an eyebrow arched --- and spends much of its run time returning there, mining her taut, sometimes imperceptible expressions; mining, as it were, a glacier for heat. That the camera spends time on Mirren's Queen Elizabeth is no accident. It seems that in the days following Princess Diana's death, everyone wanted to catch a glimpse of the face that came to represent the British monarchy, if only to watch it crumble. Stephen Frear's newest film documents the slow unraveling of the British royal family -- anachronistic, rigid, yet consumed by honor -- in the days after the "People's Princess" was killed in Paris, doing so with a deft hand, the same touch he brought to the world of illegal immigration in 2002's Dirty Pretty Things and, most famously, to the neuroses of John Cusack's Rob Gordon in 2000's High Fidelity.
The 2006 fall semester saw the advent of recorded podcasts in some Hopkins classrooms, as a result of the efforts of the Internet Technology Department and a group of professors looking to enhance the typical classroom experience,
"I don't have full confidence in a college that doesn't know how to spell John," Mark Twain said in a letter to a friend. President Brody enjoyed this joke so much that he made a commencement speech out of it, but it raises the question that most Hopkins undergrads will face perhaps more than even, "So you're going to be a doctor?" Why isn't it John Hopkins?
Barbara Abramowitz is the first to admit that her experiences at Hopkins weren't the best.
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