This being the movies, it turns out to be a journey of revelation more for the characters, it has to be said, than for the audience.

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More recently it has become the accent of choice for comedy characters like Little Britain's Vicky Pollard and the villagers in comedy film Hot Fuzz.

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He made a name for himself early on with zombie movie "Dead Alive, " and during the course of a career that has spanned more than two decades, he brought a variety of ghoulish characters to the big screen in the "Rings" films.

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Indeed, the visual is so important in this book that the descriptive writing has more emotional charge than the passages which give us access to the main characters' minds.

ECONOMIST: New fiction (1)

Driven by a tremendously talented creative team, Lucasfilm's legendary Star Wars franchise has flourished for more than 35 years, and offers a virtually limitless universe of characters and stories to drive continued feature film releases and franchise growth over the long term.

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Twitter, which has more than 200 million registered accounts, lets people broadcast tweets of up to 140 characters in length and read tweets from other users.

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What's more, the series trades on a formula that has played well with cable audiences: layered characters that are neither entirely good nor pure evil.

FORBES

They dare us to disbelieve them, they take us by the arm, they pre-empt our scepticism all with a bit more Barnes-like sophistication, it has to be said, than is good for them as independent characters.

ECONOMIST: New novels