The result does not so much flirt with the ridiculous as lie back and let the ridiculous do more or less what it wants, and Maddin aficionados will ask for nothing more.

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What I find hard to believe is not that Ciavarella would say something so ridiculous, but that his defense attorney actually thought that saying something this stupid would actually help the case.

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What makes the picture so peerlessly ridiculous is the style, not the story.

NEWYORKER: Bram Stoker��s Dracula

This is not to say impossible, but simply that a claim so ridiculous on its face would require a really good story.

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Suburban kids who play soccer do so not out of parental Europhilia, but because the unathletic ones look less ridiculous running around a soccer pitch than swinging haplessly at baseballs or desperately flinging basketballs.

ECONOMIST: Island story

Perhaps if the head of some respected scientific organization made such claims, we would chalk up the ridiculous predictions as an early sign of dementia and mercifully decline to report the predictions so as not to embarrass the person as he or she checks out of the real world.

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