Words and Short Sentences: 1. New law aims to put clamp on(收紧 clamp vt. 夹紧夹住 n. 夹具, 夹钳 put the clamps on someone/something and put the clamps on Sl. to impede or block someone or something; to restrain or restrict someone. Fred had to put the clamps on Tony, who was rushing his work too much. Tony is getting a little anxious. Time to put on the clamps. clamp down on something to act to stop or limit something Police here have finally clamped down on speeding. cramp n. 抽筋(spasm痉挛) vt. 夹紧, 约束, 限制=clamp ) mortgage exit fees. 2. 世界杯韩国输乌拉圭被淘汰: The game on the line, Luis Suarez sidestepped绕过, 避开, 晃过 two defenders in the driving rain大风雨 and struck/curling a right-footed shot off the goalpost from the edge of the penalty area. Lee Chung-yong had tied the second-round game in the 68th on a header after goalkeeper Fernando Muslera left his line attempting to punch away a looping ball. It was the first goal given up by Uruguay in the tournament. Uruguay took the lead in the eighth when goalkeeper Jung Sung-ryong failed to intercept截住, 截取, 截断 Diego Forlan's low cross from the left flank. It bounced across the goal mouth and Suarez put the ball in the net with a one-timer((没有停球的)直接射门, A one timer is an ice hockey shot that occurs when a player meets a teammate's pass with an immediate slapshot, without any attempt to control the puck on his stick. An effective one timer requires precise timing on the part of both players involved, especially the shooter.) from a tight angle.
Julia Gillard迅速登上杂志封面: "ACP is a serious publisher. When an event like this happens, you need to pull out all stops(倾巢而出, 全力以赴 )," ACP group publishing director Phil Scott says. "Generally, politicians are the worst thing you can put on a cover, but my hunch is(n. 预感直觉 I have a hunch that he didn’t really want to go我有这么一种感觉, 他并不真正想去 vt. 使隆起 ) Julia's the exception that proves the rule." With combined sales at stake for the two magazines of more than 900,000 copies, it's a courageous call(close call = close shave 1. 千钧一发 We managed to get out of the car before it caught fire, but we had a very close call. The business survived, but it was a close call. 2. 势均力敌, 旗鼓相当, 难分上下 It's going to be a close call. The vote could go either way. tough call a difficult judgment to make. It's a tough call, but I choose Fred and Mary. Sorry Tom and Carole. We're still undecided on whether to buy a place or rent—it's a tough call.). Editor Ben Naparstek says it was an "easy decision". "There are few Australian faces that represent her combination of intellect, charm and hard-nosed顽强的;不屈不挠的;不讲情面 pragmatism实用主义," he says. "(It) was one of last year's best-selling issues, which possibly says something about her broad appeal." "I'm lucky I get the luxury of seeing how the (souvenir) Woman's Day edition goes," McCabe says. "We're brutal about this. With only 12 issues a year, I can't afford to be sentimental(感情用事的, 富有情感的[和emotional不同], 指凭一时冲动让Ms. Gillard上封面). She has to sell well." "I would love a wedding. The country loves a wedding," McCabe says. "High-profile weddings are just gold because everyone wants to see the dress. The Prime Minister getting married while in office -- can you imagine? I would be stunned if she did that, though. She'd be worried it would be seen as a stunt噱头 and wouldn't want the hoop-la." But when it comes to covers, the industry was abuzz about the Illawarra Mercury's arresting redhead matchbox effort, already tipped to be an award winner.
Fox's Tony Sella on 'Knight and Day': 'Blame me, not Tom Cruise': When it comes to surviving the nasty world of Washington politics, people have often said that if you want a friend, get a dog. The same goes in Hollywood, especially when your movie has crashed and burned at the box office. So it's no surprise that all of the industry buzz over the weekend has focused on the rocky((figurative)not stable or firm; full of problems (喻)不稳定的, 不牢靠的, 问题多的 the marriage seemingly got off to a rocky start这桩婚姻看上去一开始就不稳定 the rocky road to success) opening for "Knight and Day," the supposed被认为是 sure-thing想当然的, 确定无疑的 romantic action comedy that did a belly flop(肚子先着水的跳水笨动作) at the box office, barely topping(超过; 胜过; 高过 He tops the rest in scholarship他的学识超过其他人) $20 million for the three-day weekend (giving it $27.8 million in five days of release). Despite having Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz in starring roles and a wall-to-wall(墙到墙的,整个地板铺满的) marketing blitz of TV ads from 20th Century Fox, the movie simply didn't find an audience, finishing a distant third to "Toy Story 3" and Adam Sandler's "Grown Ups." In Hollywood, when a movie fails to open, the blame game(推卸责任的行为 escape our responsibilities逃避责任, point fingers at职责, 矛头对准, 攻击, come under fire受到职责攻击, backstab背后攻击) begins in earnest. (Blame game Blame是责怪或指责的意思, game在这里是指策略或手法. Blame game是候选人把造成某些社会问题的责任推到竞选对手身上去的手法, 那怕他明明知道这是他自己的责任. "I'm not going to play the blame game and say who's at fault[有错, 有责任] that so many people are out of work. But I have to tell you my opponent did vote against three bills to create new jobs." 下面这个例子是对杜鲁门总统的评论: "Harry Truman, who was President from 1945 to 1952, was one man who did not play the blame game. He had a sign on his desk: The Buck Stops Here[the buck stops here used for telling sb that you are prepared to accept responsibility for sth自己承担责任, 责无旁贷 We don’t try to escape our responsibilities. The buck stops here我们不会试图逃避自己的责任, 我们责无旁贷].") Many in the media thought the problem started with Cruise, who did tons of press for the film but couldn't pull moviegoers into the multiplexes(multiplex (of a cinema) having several separate screens within one building (电影院)多放映厅的 ). Many in the industry, including several people close to the film, were privately pointing fingers at矛头对准, 指责 Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman, who picked the movie's title, its release date and micromanaged its marketing campaign, down to approving stills(an ordinary static photograph as opposed to a motion picture, especially a single shot from a cinema film静止摄影, 剧照 film stills电影剧照) and press kits(宣传资料袋) for the film. Also coming under fire was Tony Sella -- Fox's co-president of marketing, who is viewed as one of the best in the business -- for having done a poor job of positioning为影片定位 the $117-million film, the studio's third consecutive dud of the summer, after "Marmaduke" and "The A-Team." Sella's critics say that audiences were confused by the studio's initial trailer for the film, which ran on the front of "Avatar," the phenomenally successful James Cameron film that dominated the box office this year. When tracking about audience interest in "Knight and Day" became available several weeks ago, the numbers were surprisingly low. Despite frantic efforts by Fox to reconfigure the film's marketing message, the numbers never recovered. Knight-And-Day-Poster-Tom-Cruise Those close to the film contend认为, 主张 that the movie's title was off-putting(令人不舒服的, 令人不安的, 使人厌恶的; his scar is somewhat off-putting. I find it very off-putting to have someone watching me all the time 老是推托的) to younger moviegoers, saying it evoked wheezy, 1980s-era action films like "Tango and Cash." They were also surprised to see Fox running posters and outdoor advertising that didn't have any images of Cruise and Diaz, opting instead of silhouette轮廓剪影 style cutouts剪影 of the actors -- if you're going to pay multiple millions to movie stars, why not get your money's worth(花的上算, 买的值, 物有所值, This fur coat is a bit expensive, but you get your money's worth这件毛皮外衣是贵了些, 但你这钱花得值 We enjoyed the film so much that we felt we'd got our money's worth我们很喜欢这部电影, 觉得这钱花得值 ) from using a sexy photo of their images in the campaign? After all, for all of the inside-the-industry backstabbing of Cruise after his outbursts of off-putting behavior, the actor successfully opened 2008's "Valkyrie," a Nazi-era World War II movie that represented a far more questionable commercial genre than an action thriller like "Knight and Day." In a rare interview Monday morning, Sella, who is painfully media shy(害羞见媒体的, media-savvy) but a delightful raconteur(善于讲轶事[故事]的人; 爱说话的人, 健谈者; 说书人) when he's far away from a tape recorder, took full responsibility for the film's poor showing. He was especially vocal -- and unusually candid -- when it came to the issue of the Cruise Factor. "Blame me, don't blame Tom Cruise," he said. "We did lots of focus groups(a demographically diverse group of people assembled to participate in a guided discussion about a particular product before it is launched, or to provide ongoing feedback on a political campaign, television series, etc. [有统计学意义的代表性人群, 参加讨论产品开发或为竞选、电视节目提供反馈意见的]重点群体, 调研对象组, 群体调研 ) for this film, and no one ever said there was a star problem. Never. Tom Cruise was not the issue. I take full responsibility." He laughed. "And if the movie ends up going to $100 million, I want full responsibility too." Sella contends that the silhouette-style representations of the film's stars weren't meant to hide the actors from view. "I was doing an homage to [fabled title designer] Saul Bass," he explained. "It was a way for us to signal that this was a different, adult kind of movie. The whole campaign was designed to evoke a film like 'North by Northwest.' It wasn't in any way us trying to hide anyone, simply to make the film look unique, so you didn't just look at the billboards as if they were designed to say, 'The Two Stars Go Here.' " Sella acknowledged that the film's initial trailer didn't get its message across properly. But he insists that Fox wasn't asleep at the switch(玩忽职守, 错过机会) when the lousy tracking numbers大量跟踪数据 began showing up, as some critics have contended. "We knew there was an audience disconnect, and we reacted and tried to adjust the spots accordingly," he said. "You didn't have to be a rocket scientist([usu. with negative](informal, chiefly N. Amer.)a very intelligent person(非正式, 主北美)绝顶聪明的人 he's a nice kid — maybe not a rocket scientist, but he should come out okay他是个可爱的孩 子---也许不是绝顶聪明, 但应该是不错的) to know that when you got your trailer out in front of the biggest movie of all time and you still didn't have the tracking numbers you should have, it wasn't an awareness problem. It was a problem with our message. "The minute the tracking came out, we went into Def Con 5, because the tracking never lies -- if the numbers aren't there, you know you need to do something. We reacted almost daily in a way to make the campaign better, with different ideas and different spots. Whether we reacted effectively or not is another question, but we did our best, because we always believed in the movie." So what kept moviegoers away from "Knight and Day?" Keep reading: Sella found himself in a classic marketer's quandary(窘困,不知所措=dilemma in a quandary (about, as to)(put sb in/into a dilemma/quandary) 左右为难, 不知所措 I was in a quandary about whether to go我当时正犹豫到底去不去 She’s in a bit of a quandary about which of the jobs to accept她拿不准应该选择哪一个工作 ). He'd been running an offbeat((informal)unconventional; unusual (非正式)不符合常规的, 不同寻常的 she's a little offbeat but she's a wonderful actress她有点特别, 但是个很棒的演员) campaign to make the film feel unique. But once the audience registered its confusion with his campaign, he found himself simplifying the message, which created a new set of problems. "Once we decided to change the message to be as literal as we could be -- to help moviegoers understand the film -- then people started to say, 'Oh, I've seen that movie before. It's 'Mr and Mrs Smith' or it's 'True Lies.' And that was exactly what we'd tried not to do, to make the movie feel like something you'd seen before." One of the biggest problems with "Knight and Day" was that it appealed largely to an older audience, either because younger moviegoers have little interest in a sophisticated "North by Northwest"-style thriller or because Cruise and Diaz have even less of a following among younger moviegoers than anyone had imagined. According to reporting by my colleague Ben Fritz, under-25 moviegoers made up 44% of the film's opening weekend audience, a figure that doesn't bode well for the film, since even fewer younger moviegoers will be available after the new "Twilight" film opens Wednesday. In the summer, adult moviegoers rarely drive the box office, especially when your film skews as old as "Knight and Day" did and receives decidedly mixed reviews. "If you're over 40, this movie was a rock star -- the whole concept, the Nick and Nora of it all," says Sella. "It's a grown up film. That was the whole theory behind selling the film, that it was a cool, adult movie, hence the poster and the graphics behind it. We wouldn't have called it 'Knight and Day' if we weren't going for an adult audience. I guess that if I'm guilty of anything要是我有错的话, it's that I always believed an adult movie could work, even in the summer." But why didn't the young moviegoers come too? Sella falls silent. "Honestly, I don't know," he said. "I've still got to try and figure that out." He dismissed complaints about the film's title, arguing that titles, good or bad, are overrated. "If there are three words that you should never put in any title, its 'Dead Poet's Society,' and yet that film was a huge success. Titles really don't hurt movies, and for that matter, I don't know what else we could have called it. What we were up against was bigger than that." Frankly, no one knows for sure what kept moviegoers away from "Knight and Day." Even if the film had a lousy title and a questionable release date, it's easy to name dozens of films that have triumphed over those factors, just as it's easy to name dozens more films that had unbelievably enticing吸引人的 titles and a perfect release date -- and still went down in flames. If Angelina Jolie opens "Salt," a July 23 action thriller that looks eerily like "Wanted," her last action thriller, then we'll have to wonder if Cruise and Diaz really have completely lost their drawing power票房号召力. And if "Salt" is a disappointment, then perhaps people will cast a wider net, saying that movie stars are even more overrated than ever before, or argue that action thrillers are dead -- at least until the next one that comes along has a terrific opening. It's why Hollywood loves to play the blame game.
