In "The Act of Love," Jacobson explores sexual obsession and secret manipulation.
JOHANNESBURG — Corruption charges against Jacob Zuma — the man almost certain to become South Africa's president after elections later this month — were dropped Monday by prosecutors who said the case had been tainted by a tawdry, secret manipulation of the legal process from within their own ranks.
But in films as superficially different as My Beautiful Laundrette, Dangerous Liaisons and Dirty Pretty Things, he's shown an interest in certain recurrent themes and situations, among them the taking of moral decisions in precarious situations, the secret manipulation of other people's lives and the ironic, usually unintended, consequences of our everyday actions.
Hiding out, concealing thoughts and feelings, and secret manipulation are drains.
But theirs is a house of secrets and manipulation, and of caste and racial prejudices that the author clearly sees as a mirror of Malaysian society.
(The fact that he'd signed a new endorsement deal with Izotope, an Antares competitor, and is planning to market a new and as-yet-top-secret voice-manipulation program code-named "The T-Pain Effect" probably had more than a little bit to do with this decision).
The disenchantment was cumulative - the revelations of the secret speech, the manipulation of the democratic process, the lying, the reprimands for breaches of discipline.
But with tempers rising along with food and fuel prices, some market scholars are concerned that speculation, the legal pursuit of market profits, is becoming a synonym for manipulation — secret and collusive trading activity aimed at deliberately moving prices to produce illegal profits.
Arbitrary colonial borders, coups engineered by British and American secret services, and Western manipulation of local despots, including Saddam Hussein, played some role in creating failed states and tyrannies.
"Politicians are enriching themselves and their parties through secret stock transactions, market manipulations, and the use of insider information, which are against the law," Mr. Kakuma said.
Thus begins a tale involving agents and double agents on both sides of the English Channel, secret grudges and vicious manipulations, in the midst of which Marlowe suddenly finds himself a produced playwright, the toast of London.
