friday, august 13, 2010
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BOOK WORLD The gun molls who
GALLERIES
Landscaping business John Chiara’s “Echo Lake at Meyers Grade” presents an abject panorama that is the antithesis of classic landscape photography. C2
didn’t sing & dance “Chicago” brought two lethal ladies into the spotlight. Here’s the story of the real people who inspired the musical. C2
CAROLYN HAX Hey, no fair!
? Her sister deserves the
good life after a difficult and deprived childhood, but envy is rearing its head. C3
3@washingtonpost.com/discussions Carolyn Hax takes your questions and comments. Noon • Lisa de Moraes takes your questions about the world of television. 1 p.m. MOVIE REVIEWS ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
UP FOR THE JOB?Elizabeth Warren could become most powerful new banking regulator in decades.
Warren: Reformer or zealot?
Top candidate to head new consumer agency provokes strong feelings
by Brady Dennis Somewhere along the line, Eliza-
beth Warren became a symbol. She’s either the plain-spoken, su- premely smart crusader for middle- class families that her supporters adore, or she’s the power-hungry headline seeker her critics loathe, a fi- ery zealot disguised in professorial glasses and pastel cardigans. But no one disputes that she’s the most prominent and polarizing candi- date to lead the new Bureau of Con- sumer Financial Protection. The idea for an independent federal agency to protect ordinary borrowers from abuses by lenders was largely Warren’s idea, and Congress made it a reality as part of the legislation adopted last month to overhaul financial regula- tions. The bureau’s director will be the most powerful new banking regulator in decades and the first with the exclu- sive mission of focusing on con- sumers. As President Obama considers
whom to nominate for that role, the debate has become less about who might get the job and more about whether Warren will or won’t. Warren met Thursday at the White
warren continued on C3
Vast center for the arts nearly ready in Arlington
by Jacqueline Trescott Arlington County plans to open the
Artisphere, an expansive cultural cen- ter, in October. It will include three art galleries, two theaters and a 4,000- square-foot ballroom. On Thursday afternoon officials led
a tour through the roughed-out spac- es, which were piled high with boxes of acoustical tile, plastic buckets of vi- nyl paint and wheels of steel wires. Standing in what will be a black-box theater, Norma Kaplan, chief of the county’s cultural affairs division, de- scribed the lighting grid and the cur- tain system for the flexible space. “We are down to the finishes. And we are still on track for Oct. 10,” she said of the whole project. That sounded optimistic. But the building on Wilson Boulevard in Ross- lyn, the former home of the Newseum, has not undergone major structural alterations. It’s the insides that needed reconfiguration.
Kaplan promised something new, artisphere continued on C6
SEAN MCCABE FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
with sketchy goals T
Three quests,
Men on a mission (macho and otherwise) isn’t your thing? ‘Eat Pray Love’ might not be either. by Ann Hornaday
he simultaneous arrival this weekend of “The Expendables” and “Eat Pray Love” is being cast in some quarters as the cin- ematic version of the battle of the sexes. Which demographic will prove more pow- erful at the box office — the guys flocking to the macho mayhem of “a film
by Sylvester Stallone”? Or the women Julia Roberts is counting on to lap up her movie ver- sion of the best-selling book? But the showdown may prove to be mis-
talk and hyperbolic action that viewers would expect from the man who brought us “Rocky” and “Rambo.” The movie’s best set piece — when Stallone’s character
The
framed, because “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” a movie Sly and Julia fans most likely have never heard of, is likely to split the differ- ence. As a third-party candidate wildly popu- lar with young fans of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel series, “Scott Pilgrim” has every chance to siphon off precious teenage boys who would otherwise see “The Expendables” with their dads, or girls who might choose its wispy-voiced star, Michael Cera, over “Eat Pray Love’s” Javier Bardem. (Their loss, am I right, ladies?) Each of these films amply rewards its core constituen-
cies. “The Expendables,” which Stallone co-wrote, di- rected and stars in, traffics in all of the tough-guy trash
Expendables rr1
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Eat Pray Love rr1
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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
literally catches a plane as it embarks on a perilous wa- ter takeoff, then strafes a nearby pier and reduces it to a huge burning cinder — inspired whoops of approval at a recent screening. Later in the movie, when Terry Crews blasts a guy’s head off in an ele- gantly silhouetted shot, the crowd burst into disbelieving laughter. From its cartoony vio- lence (there’s actually very little blood seen in “The Expendables,” although you can hear it spurt, squish and gurgle) to a summit meeting of Stallone and two superannuated action stars, the movie veers recklessly and hilari- ously between hardboiled action and pure camp.
Stallone, Crews and their co-stars Jason
Statham, Dolph Lundgren and Jet Li play a group of mercenaries hired for a tough assign- ment in the South American jungle. As a mythic hero quest stripped to its most elemental essentials, “The Ex- pendables” displays its own crude but legible command
movie reviews continued on C6
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