And some people, apparently, are even up arbitrary turns of events in order to keep her awards flowing.

This morning,Billboard reported that Adele&8217;s &8220;Someone Like You,&8221; which is currently the number one song on the Hot 100, is the first ballad to sit atop that list in over three years. They cite Rihanna&8217;s &8220;Take a Bow&8221; as the last ballad to inhabit the top position.

The article is a pretty interesting read, because it gets into the psychology of radio programmers and how they approach playing songs based on tempo, as well as the way that trends dictate what the top song in the country isrihanna music (thanks to the likes of Ke$ha, Britney Spears, and Katy Perry, uptempo pop tends to rule radio). There are more machinations in choosing radio playlists than you probably thought.

While that conversation is well and good, it&8217;s built on a fundamental untruth: &8220;Someone Like You&8221; is not the first ballad to top the Billboard Hot 100 since &8220;Take a Bow.&8221; Since &8220;Take a Bow&8221; abdicated the position to Lil Wayne&8217;s &8220;Lollipop&8221; back in 2008, at least three songs that could be described as ballads have taken the number one position.

The most obvious one is &8220;Love the Way You Lie,&8221; Eminem and Rihanna&8217;s juggernaut from the summer of 2010. Though it prominently features angry rapping and a video about domestic violence, it certainly is as slow-burning as &8220;Someone Like You.&8221; Let&8217;s put it another way: You certainly can&8217;t dance to it.

There are other chart-toppers from the hip-hop world that could probably slide into the &8220;ballad&8221; category, including T.I.&8217;s &8220;Whatever You Like&8221; and Jay-Z&8217;s &8220;Empire State of Mind.&8221; Are these not ballads? Is it possible to craft a hip-hop ballad? And what is a ballad, anyway? Is there a certain set of criteria it must satisfy, or is it like the Supreme Court&8217;s take on ography and you simply know it when you see it?

Let us know your thoughts on balladry in the comments below. (And seriously, &8220;Love the Way You Lie&8221; is totally a ballad.)

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I think part of what defines a ballad is the sentimental or romantic aspect of the lyrics. It&8217;s not just a slower slong.

I&8217;m with you on this. And by this definition, Love the Way You Lie definitely isn&8217;t a ballad &8211; I&8217;d never even thought of it in those terms, however much I like the song.

I think the reason for the confusion is that &8220;Love the Way You Lie&8221; and &8220;Empire State&8221; are classified first and foremast as &8220;hip-hop&8221; songs, not ballads. That&8217;s not to say that they can&8217;t be both &8211; I just think that most people have a hard time thinking of or associating an Eminem song with &8220;ballads&8221; (even though &8220;Cleaning Out My Closet&8221; was a ballad &8211; at least to me because of the emotion the song packed).

Agreed. Kyle, you&8217;re wrong in deeming those songs as ballads &8211; they&8217;re slow, but it&8217;s just ignorant to -et all slow songs (as you are seemingly trying to do with your article) as ballads. Billboard is correct in saying that Adele&8217;s &8220;Someone Like You&8221; is the first ballad to hit the top in three years.

If you can bounce to the beat, which you can in all three of your examples,Nike soccer shoes it&8217;s not a ballad.

From Wikipedia: &8220;A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music . . . In the later 19th century it took on the meaning of a slow form of popular love song and the term is now often used as synonymous with any love song, particularly the pop or rock power ballad.&8221; Yeah, definitely not Love the Way You Lie.

While I love all 3 examples mentioned in your article, I completely agree with the posts that they are so NOT ballads. Which brings me to another point, why does everything have to be disagreed with? Its irly obvious to most people that Billboard is not lying and yet we have to have an article that questions their stance. Its ridiculous. I understand the author was just &8220;thinking out loud&8221; but seriously lets try to remember the times when people actually took things at ce value.

I&8217;d have to disagree; I don&8217;t feel like those three songs could/should be considered ballads, especially &8220;Love the Way You Lie.&8221; Then again,nike air max shoes. I&8217;ve had a different take on the meaning behind those lyrics since I heard the song.

I guess it also depends on the definition of a ballad. If it&8217;s just a slow tempo song, I can see the point of your selections. If it&8217;s in regard to a love/break-up song, I&8217;m not sure how you would define the remaining two: Empire State of Mind in regards to NYC?

Whatever You Like might be the closest to a ballad, buuuut I guess I&8217;d have to deult to the Supreme Court on that one. Listening to it again, it just doesn&8217;t feel like a ballad&8230;.

Every ballad is a slow song, but not every slow song is a ballad. &8216;Empire State of Mind&8217; is atypical radio re because of its slower tempo, but it is not a ballad. I think Billboard is right, but on a point that is not very impressive really.

The version at the end of the iTunes Only &8220;Loud&8221; album (Piano Version) without Eminem is the ONLY version of &8220;Love The Way You Lie&8221; that can be dubbed a ballad. And the Billboard article you&8217;re citing was written a week ago, NOT today, proving once again how not only poor the writing has gotten here, but how late EW has been on alot of things in the entertainment world. And a s a n of music, if you consider T.I. &8216;s &8220;Whatever U Like&8221; or Jay-Z & Alicia&8217;s &8220;Empire State of Mind&8221; (Again, there is a Part II (Broken Down) without Jay-Z that could qualify as a ballad) I would seriously reconsider your artistic license as a qaualified journalist. There is quite a difference between a mid-tempo song and a ballad, and it doesn&8217;t take a music major to know the difference. And a ballad CAN NOT feature a rapper. If T.I. read your piece and caught that u referred to him as a balladeer, he&8217;d prolly wind up back in prison again for a third time in a year for murder.

If Nicki Minaj&8217;s &8220;Your Love&8221; had topped the charts, I could consider that as an example of a 1 hip-hop ballad. There is nothing romantic or slow-tempo about &8220;Love the Way You Lie&8221; (original version), &8220;Empire State of Mind&8221; (original version) or &8220;Whatever You Like.&8221;

Phil &8211; My point was, I agree with you,nike outlet store. except for the part that a ballad can&8217;t feature a rapper.

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Rockers We Were Promised Jetpacks get lovely and violent for Medicine video: Watch the EXCLUSIVE premiere here!

OK! NEWS: MTV VMA WINNERS STARS SHINE & PAY TRIBUTE TO AMY WINEHOUSE

In the video, Nicki shows off many hair-s including a pink pixie cut and some blonde cheetah print locks. Rihanna, on the other hand nike air max shoes, kept it with her long red and black hair while walking around the post-apocalyptic set.

According toMTV News, Sanaa Hamri directed the video,Nike soccer shoes which was filmed back in January.

Both ladies go through several wardrobe changes, but it&8217;s Nicki who also gets to battle some ninjas!

What do you think of Nicki and Rihanna&8217;s new video?

OK! NEWS: RIHANNA SNORKELS AWAY SEX TAPE RUMORS IN ITALY

Watch Nicki and Rihanna&8217;s new music video, below!

August 29, 2011 at 6:15 pmI liked Nicki Minaj&8217;s and Rihanna&8217;s New Music VIDEO nike outlet store, Fly, it was great!

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Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston: Brad Pitts ex Jennifer Aniston may be upstaged by his current love Angelina Jolie.

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&8216;Teen Mom&8217; Clip: Watch Catelynn Lowell Fight With Tyrihanna musicler Baltierra Over Going &8216;Clubbing&8217;

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I sell more tickets in Detroit than in any other place than my hometown, and I think thats because it has so much in common with St. Louis, the comedian said. You had the auto industry and we had the breweries, working-class jobs that paid well enough and included benefits.

Now were the murder capitals; we flip-flop every year. Its like One more person and we could have beat them! Its all kind of a reflection of whats going on, though youre building a new Chrysler plant.

Its a welcome change from the last time she took a ride through Detroit, passing mansions that looked more like crack houses, she said, with big signs that read Please dont burn these down on Halloween.

I wanted to say, Why not? she said. It seems as if theyd be doing the city a vor.

After more than 20 years in the business, Madigan says shes seen the bigger picture, and with that comes the realization that whats happening in her milys small corner of the country is true in Cleveland and hundreds of other places around the country.

&8226; Who: Kathleen Madigan: Gone Madigan

&8226; When: 7 p.m. Sunday

&8226; Where: Temple Theatre, 203 N. Washington, Saginaw

&8226; Tickets: $50 premier; $29

&8226; Info:templetheatre- or 989-754-SHOW

For 15 years, Id play a city for a week at a time, which really gave me time to check things out, she said. Id suggest the same to politicians. They travel, but they dont take time to see whats really happening.

Even with her ster paced schedule today, zooming in for a single night, I see whats being discussed, she said. Across the Midwest, half of the schools are closing,Nike soccer shoes but no one in politics is talking about education. Were putting out morons and then we get mad when we run into them at customer service.

Theres hope for America, but when we dont even answer our own phones anymore, you know somethings wrong. Jon Huntsman,nike air max shoes. whos running for president, is fluent in Chinese and that gets my vote. He can tell them The checks in the mail when they call looking for their money.

Its the sort of real-life humor she brings Sunday to the Temple Theatre in Saginaw, on the tail of the Showtime special, Gone Madigan, now available on DVD, and winning the SIRIUS Challenge Cup,nike outlet store. named by listeners as the radio services vorite comedian.

Forget the blue jokes; Its not in my make-up, she said, and it doesnt translate well to the late-night television shows that embrace her routine. In addition to her appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Show with David Letterman and Late Night with Conan OBrien, she won Last Comic Standing in 2004 and came back as a talent scout in 2007.

It was great because you reach people like my brother and his wife, who come home from work, eat, put their kids to sleep, catch Law and Order and maybe a few minutes of the news before going to bed.

I already had a following by the time I competed, but this added on a new audience. It was a nice bump.

Shes become a regular with another crowd off the beaten path, entertaining troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Theyre the best crowds of all, she said, adding that it helps when youre the only show in town. Well go to Afghanistan for Christmas and its freezing Nike mercurial vapor superfly, and you see people out there, four hours before the show, sitting in their chairs. Were so happy they showed up.

Theyre fighting a war thats kind of forgotten, Madigan said, and not even mentioned on a daily basis in the news anymore.

We have more than 100,000 people there, the population of Little Rock, doing their job and doing it for us, she said. I put on one of those 35-pound backpacks and fell over. Weve been there in the summer when the temperatures reach 120 degrees and theyre still wearing long sleeves and heavy flak jackets.

Its awful; if it was me, Id lay down and cry. Id rather storm the beaches in Normandy where you might get some wine and cheese at the end, or humor magazineinvade Germany and have some bratwurst and a beer. Here they have goat meat and something they tell you are eggs but you know they really arent.

Still, she said, the troops are so excited when they bring the tour, it makes it a lot of fun, even though it takes a few weeks to fully recover from the experience.

Its like a little city on the base, with people doing secretarial jobs and laundry and everything, she said. And they must have figured a way to sleep, though we havent yet.

Having fun is what brought Madigan into the business in the first place, a release with friends from her 9-to-5 job at a magazine following college.

After we were done doing magazine stuff, wed head for the comedy club, where they had an open mic, she said. I thought I can do that and then it became a way to make some extra money.

The hobby turned into a career.

Mia Catalano is a rough diamond in the overly polished world of One Tree Hill, the drama in which unfeasibly good-looking, well-dressed young people bicker a lot about their feelings and gaze meaningfully into the middle distance.

Miss Catalano is a bit of a drama queen and she lets her complicated love life bleed into the songs she writes for her band on the show but after some hard lessons, shes learned that music is about talking to people, not money. Cue another meaningful gaze into the middle distance. Yup, Mias a bit of a bad un and her storylines are the bread and butter of a drama that thrives on the tortured lives of people with too much money and perfect abs.

Mia is played by 24-year-old Kate Voegele and as is often the case, she couldnt be more different than her character. A country gal from Ohio, when shes not grinding out lines like I want you to want me back, Kate likes to kick back in ripped jeans, second-hand vintage boots and white t-shirt and drink beer in dive bars.

Its actually really fun playing Mia, Kate says on the phone from her adopted home of LA. I get to do things through that character that I wouldnt experience in real life. Mia is a fun character and shes definitely more feisty than I am, more dramatic than I am. Mia is constantly in catfights. Its funny doing stuff like that because Im so not that type of girl. I dont go looking for drama but Mia got bored in One Tree Hill and decided to start some drama. Its fun, I love being able to go to these different places because its hilarious, very entertaining.

What she does have in common with Mia is a love of music. Music is an integral part of One Tree Hill (individual episodes are named after songs), so it made sense that Voegele joined the cast as the bad girl rocker, but even before she got that break the actress had released several albums that got her noticed for her rootsy, heartland rock sound.

Voegeles new album Gravity Happens (a line worthy of a quip in One Tree Hill) has just been released and its a pleasant mix of country rock and roots ballads. I grew up on a lot of classic American songwriters like James Taylor and Carole King, she says. People whose main strength is in their songwriting and melodies and theres a beautiful simplicity to them. I love the folk singer Patty Griffin and I think her music is still the best soul food out there.

But Neil Young is her all-time hero. She shared a stage with him at a Farm Aid concert a few years ago and even namechecks him on her song One Hundred Dollar Bill. I am obsessed with Neil Young, I love Neil Young, Voegele says. When I met him I couldnt even speak. I was just starting in music and this guy is a legend. I was just overwhelmed with starstuck feelings. I hardly uttered a word. I introduced myself and ran away to the bathroom freaking out.

She also mentions Mumford and Sons as a vourite but she also raves about Dublin troubadour Paddy Casey. He is amazing, she enthuses. Hes getting better known in the States. I stumbled across his stuff in college and I just fell in love with his music, its so beautiful. Id love to collaborate with him because his voice is really beautiful and his melodies are so haunting.

So youre not a Gaga girl then? Ha! Gaga? You gotta respect what she does. Shes made a huge statement with her music and I think shes incredibly talented. Im a n but I dont think I could ever put on the outfits that she does and do the type of the show she does. Thats not me but I think shes amazing and shes doing a lot of good with her music too.

Shes a brand, shes so much more than her music, whereas Rihanna is more about the sound. Gaga has started this avant-garde wave as a musician. It means something different to be an artist now because she has all these aspects of her career. Shes almost more of a brand than an artist and I dont mean that in a bad way. I like Rihanna. I like to work out to Rihanna!

Right now, Voegele is in the middle of her European tour (she played Dublin last week) and shes not sure if shell be cropping up in the new season of One Tree Hill. I love the show but time is always up in the air with me because Im a guest star, so I may end up coming back. For now Im not on it, but its been four seasons and its just been so much fun. Its a great mily of people and I really have enjoyed it.

Gravity Happens is out now

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9.00pm National Geographic Channel

Way down in Mississippi, four-year-old Kanon Tipton is billed as the worlds youngest preacher. Encouraged to stand up before his congregation by his grandther (also a preacher), he speaks incoherently into the microphone (well, he is only four), occasionally throwing in biblical references hes heard. But this is all it takes to get the adult crowd whooping and hollering. Amen, brother! Speak the truth! Meanwhile, in Rio de Janeiro, Matheus Moraes has been evangelising since he was six years old. Now 12, he continues to tour his native Brazil converting thieves, drug dealers and gang members into clean-living, born-again Christians. This scinating documentary questions whether these children are a force for good, the world a better place in therihanna music spiritual battle against evil, or if are they are the result of natical parents and congregations desperate for miracles? After all, is there really such a thing as a natical Christian child, or only a child of natical Christian parents?

8.30pm TG4

HECTOR is back! Irish TVs first ever GAA quiz show, presented by the one they call hEochagin returns for a second season. Clubs from the four provinces compete to be named No.1 quiz-club champions. They ce a tough test, battling through qualifiers, quarter-finals, semi-finals and onto the grand final. Joining HECTOR! are resident captains Evanne N Chuilinn of RT Sport and Mchel Domhnaill from TG4s GAA Beo. The participating clubs are: Kiltaine (Mayo), St John Boscos (Down), Cratloe (Clare), Annaghdown (Galway), Geevagh (Sligo), St Finbarrs (Cork), Newport (Tipperary), Finnuge (Kerry), Round Towers (Dublin), Na Rossa (Donegal) Nike soccer shoes, Dungarvan (Waterford), Youghal (Cork), Clan na nGael (Armagh) nike air max shoes, Roundwood (Wicklow), Ballyboden St Endas (Dublin) and Oilein rann (Galway).

8.00pm RT One

Architect Dermot Bannon is back with the fifth and bigger and better series of Room to Improve. Now an hour long, Dermot has new challenges to tackle, especially as mortgage approvals are thin on the ground. We kick off the new series in Cork City with the youngest and most ambitious couple yet. Meadhbh and Niall (both 27) are not only trying to completely restore a 1920s cottage but Meadhbh is also working on her PhD and has a full-time job, while Niall runs two busy phone stores. Oh, and theyre also planning a wedding within a month of the house being complete. Piece of cake really.

9.00pm Sky Living

Former Steps star Claire Richards continues her mission to discover the real reason why she never wins her battle with her yo-yoing weight. Tonight, she meets Gemma Todd, a woman who gave up solid food for a year, eating only powdered soups to lose a massive 11 stone. Which is nuts, so Claire meets a nutritionist, discovers shes a stone-and-a-half heavier than she thought she was, has a cry, and poses naked. Plus! Her career is on the rise as shes booked to take part in a music reality show. All very well but when is H going to make an appearance?

9.00pm, Channel 4

Forget about tweaking your kitchen or re-tiling the downstairs loo, this show thinks BIG. That man in the wax jacket, designer Kevin McCloud, is back to follow the stories of heartache, triumph and subsidence as hardy souls tackle builds and conversions to secure their dream homes. In tonights opening episode, he meets artists Freddie Robins and Ben Coode-Adams who set about converting a huge Grade II listed timber framed barn in Es into a live/work space for themselves and their daughter. The barn is 500 years old and seven times the size of an average house so turning it into any kind of home is a challenge.

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These past few weeks have been so exciting for a movie buff like me. Film festival season is like playoffs for a football nut. Films with such promise and prestige can turn out to be utter disappointments, and underdog films with no-name casts can surprise and become major Oscar contenders. Anything can happen, and like Fantasy Football, the movie-obsessed track their picks every move.

The Venice Film Festival wrapped up this weekend with a few films primed to be huge Oscar bait, getting some extremely mixed reactions. Most divisive of all was Roman Polanskis Carnage starring Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly,Nike soccer cleats Christoph Waltz and Kate Winslet. The film, based on a Tony-winning play, takes place entirely in a single room and plays like a comedic version of Whos Afraid of VirginiaMovies-TV Woolf.

There is no clear front-runner for any of the major awards categories this year nike air max shoes, predicting the nominees even more of a challenge. But if I had to give it an early shot Id predict the silent film The Artist, Steven Spielbergs War Horse or the post-Sept. 11 drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close starring Sandra Bullock and Tom Hanks to take home Best Picture this year.

The return of ll is already my TiVo feel overworked and exhausted. Not only are all my vorite shows returning, but there are some very promising new series ready to premiere. The X Factor reunites Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul, and my anticipation could not be higher.

Up All Night starring Christina Applegate, Will Arnett and Maya Rudolph looks like it could be hilarious, and with that cast why wouldnt it be?

Even harder to predict than the Oscars will be which new series is the first to be canceled. My vote goes to Whitney starring the Chelsea Lately regular Whitney Cummings. A show with a laugh track will feel completely out of place on NBCs Thursday night lineup.

Returning shows also have a lot to prove this year. Will a Steve Carell-less The Office crumble without him? Will Ashton Kutcher be obnoxious or funny on Two and a Half Men? Will Glee ever be truly great again? All these burning questions and more will be revealed in the next few weeks.

For a preppy guy like me, nothing in my closet should ever go out of -. This is one of the biggest reasons I love ll so much. I am obsessed with sweaters. J. Crews cotton-cashmere V-neck sweater should be a staple in every guys wardrobe. I have one in almost every color Nike mercurial vapor superfly, no joke. You can dress them up with a pair of khakis and a button-down underneath or keep it casual with jeans. Im anxiously awaiting the day when the forecast says its chilly enough to make the trip to St. Louis to bring back my ll clothes.

Just last week I walked into Starbucks and immediately grinned from ear to ear. The pumpkin spice latte was back! It was still a bit warm outside to order a hot one, so iced would have to suffice. Pumpkin spice treats are my crack in autumn. Whether its bread, muffins, pancakes or pies, I just cant get enough of it. But has anybody ever eaten a pumpkin by itself? If it tastes like it smells, these delicious treats have to be more spice than pumpkin. But whatever the ratio, I apologize to all my closest friends in advance for my pumpkin spice breath all season long.

By now it should be quite obvious that I am crazy for ll. I didnt even get to mention football season, tailgates, leaves changing colors and the release of the iPhone 5. The things I love about this season are practically endless. My only gripe is that ll leads to a very dreaded winter.

The opinions expressed by The Maneater columnists do not represent the opinions of The Maneater editorial board.

The subscription-video service went live in Brazil Monday and launches in another 40+ nations by Sept. 12. Brazilians can sample the service free for one month. First announced earlier this summer, its the first venture outside of North America for Netflix, which launched in Canada one year ago.

We are excited to be bringing Netflix to Latin America and the Caribbean, said Reed Hastings nike outlet store,Nike soccer shoes co-founder and CEO of Netflix. People throughout the region are online in ever-greater numbers and they love movies and TV shows. We are proud to bring them the Netflix experience of instantly enjoying as many movies and TV shows as they want, when they want for one low price.

Video from Netflix is available on a variety of devices, including computers, game consoles and smart TVs. The Portuguese-language version will cost Brazilians $15 per month ($9 U.S.). The Spanish-language version of the streaming service hits Argentina (39 pesos or $9.25 U.S. per month), Paraguay and Uruguay ($8 U.S.) on Wednesday.

Chile and Bolivia debut on Thursday at similar prices, followed by Colombia, Peru Nike mercurial vapor superfly, Venezuela and Ecuador on Friday. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean will get their first look at Netflix on Monday, Sept. 12. The service in the Caribbean will be available in both English and Spanish.

This might be just the beginning of a global expansion for Netflix. The company is widely expected to expand to parts of Europe in early 2012. On Sept. 1, the company enacted a 60 percent rate hike on its DVD+streaming serviceMovies-TV in the U.S., something it surely hopes drops off the front page with this latest announcement.

Weve created a slashtag called /likes that contains sites you and your friends have liked via the Facebook like button. It will dry humor definitiontake a few minutes for /likes to fully populate.

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RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK Los Angeles Screening Recap With Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford; Updates on INDY 5 and More

Psychoanalysis is a funny profession.  Its doctors aren&8217;t like cardiologists or gastroenterologists.  Your heart is your heart, your intestines are your intestines, and so forth.  Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, attempt to impose rationality on the irrationality of emotions.  It works from a vague definition of &8220;normal&8221; and then tries to determine why a behavior deviates from that unspecified norm.  Sigmund Freud believed it was not the place of psychoanalysts to simply point out the abnormality, while his protg Carl Jung thought that the practice was worthless if it couldn&8217;t be advanced to help those in need.  These two figures illustrate the clash of the ego, id, and super-ego in David Cronenberg&8217;s A Dangerous Method, a film which brilliantly explores Freudian concepts and how we wish to indulge our base emotions but instead build a wall of reason and science to imprison our desires.  However, in attempting to convey this blockade, A Dangerous Method inadvertently cuts off its emotional connection to the audience.

The film opens in Switzerland in 1904 where Russian Jew Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) arrives at a mental institution.  It&8217;s a good place for her to be since she&8217;s literally stark raving mad.  Spielrein is placed under the care of Dr. Jung (Michael Fassbender), and he believes she&8217;s the perfect patient for a new field of medicine, psychoanalysis or &8220;The Talking Cure&8221;.  Dr. Freud (Viggo Mortensen) developed the technique of asking questions and letting the patient work through his or her emotion, but Jung wants to implement the new method and research its effects.  Through her conversations with Jung, Spielrein begins to understand her S&M fetish, returns to sanity, and begins her own research in the field of psychology.  Meanwhile, Jung begins a friendship with Freud but Jung&8217;s clandestine ual relationship with Spielrein not only serves to highlight the differences between the doctors&8217; personalities and philosophies,nike air max shoes. but foreshadows what will cause them to break apart.

From the outset,Nike soccer cleats we see that science is personal for Jung.  In an early scene, he does a polygraph test on his wife, not because he doesn&8217;t trust her, but because he can&8217;t stay emotionally distant from his research.  The polygraph test hints how Jung will intimately pursue his &8220;research&8221; when he takes Spielrein as his mistress.  Jung keeps their relationship secret and denies the rumors of it, but his super-ego keeps clawing at the door of his mind and he is torn between indulging his desiresa belief espoused by doctor/patient/total-id Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel)and remaining ithful to his wife and upholding his rising career.

For his part, Freud understands the fragility of his new medical discipline and he keeps his emotional distance from almost everyone even though his catch-all answer to psychosis (it&8217;s ual) betrays his own repression.  Freud believes he has a close friendship with Jung but it steadily becomes clear that Freud will not relinquish the direction of his discipline even though he declares Jung as his heir-apparent.  These two men can never be colleagues nor can they truly disconnect.  They are opposed yet work in concert and Cronenberg brilliantly crafts the ego/id/super-ego metaphor without even mentioning the concept to the audience.

A Dangerous Method is a wickedly smart movie.  Cronenberg challenges his audience at every turn forcing us to listen to the double-meaning of every utterance and how every &8220;scientific&8221; claim made by Jung, Freud, Gross, and Spielrein belies a personal and emotional conviction.   The characters believe they can impose rationality on the irrational when in ct it&8217;s the other way around.  Psychoanalysis is supposed to reveal the psyche but its language instead obfuscates the emotions the profession hopes to explore.

Unfortunately, A Dangerous Method has the same problem. Cronenberg cleverly demonstrates how psychobabble can disconnect individuals from their emotions and from each other, but he does it too well.  The film relies on its actors to convey the emotion but the wall is simply too high.  Mortensen is terrific as Freud and he lends the film its dry humor along with its few shades of sadness as the Austrian doctor goes from hoping his work will be carried on by his protg to fearing how it will be perverted by Jung&8217;s emotions and willingness to consider fringe-science like telepathy and mysticism.  Similarly, Fassbender does a ntastic job presenting the thematic conflict embodied in Jung&8217;s internal conflict of super-ego and id.

Knightley&8217;s performance takes some getting used to.  Because Spielrein opens the film and the character is screeching, laughing manically, and all around looney-tunes, Knightley has to go big and since the madness is textbook, it looks like an unimaginative performance.  As she juts out her lower jaw and throws on a Russian accent, the audience knows that she is &8220;Acting&8221; in all capital letters.  But once the character calms down and begins to explore her uality, her feelings for Jung, and her personal aspirations, then Knightley can provide a respectable performance and she holds the screen just as easily as Mortensen and Fassbender.

And yet these tremendous actors can&8217;t break through the dialogue and their characters constantly psychoanalyzing each other.  The film can&8217;t rouse any emotions because it purposefully throws up so many barriers to the characters addressing their own emotions.  When Spierlein breaks down and confesses how she became ually excited when her ther beat her, it&8217;s within the sterile confines of Jung&8217;s psychoanalysis.  She&8217;s talking through her pain but since we&8217;re seeing her through Jung&8217;s perspective and Jung is trying to keep his emotional distance, we&8217;re never let in.  We&8217;re encouraged to look Nike soccer shoes, but we&8217;re not allowed to touch.  Freud would approve.

Rating: B

For all of our coverage of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival,click here. Also, here are links to all of my TIFF 2011 reviews so r:

2011 Toronto International Film Festival,A Dangerous Method,David Cronenberg,Keira Knightley,Michael Fassbender,Review,TIFF,TIFF 2011,Toronto Film Festival,Toronto International Film Festival,Viggo Mortensen

Tremendous review. I&8217;m excited for this &8211; the story sounds very intriguing and characters appear stimulating&8230;

looking forward to it. also good writing Matt.

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