It has elements of "Waiting for Guffman," the Icarus myth and Georges Méliès's "Voyage dans la Lune," with shrewd world-is-flat observations from a large cast of Turkish scholars, and it should not be missed.
Playing a shrewd second-world game, it cultivates good relations with both the United States and China (just as elusive Kazahkstan has made sure that its oil pipelines run north, south, east and west), while channeling oil revenues into diversifying its economy and building its infrastructure.
In fact, the 22-year-old Nowitzki, whose play has blossomed just as his coaches expected, represents something very shrewd in the world of professional sports.
Shrewd thinking: The world's fifth-biggest carmaker may procure a better credit rating for the bank, lowering the refinancing costs for the unit along the thinking that the better the rating, the more propitious refinancing conditions will be.
The rebellious and musically inclined Shekhar spends his days playing the music of Rabindranath Tagore or Elvis Presley and composing his own songs with Lalita rather than becoming part of his shrewd father's world of profit and business.
Like Tennessee Williams's Maggie the Cat, a character she once played in a Cleveland Play House production of "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," Ms. Wagner is a shrewd survivor in worlds dominated by alpha males, determined to land on her feet even as the ground shifts under her.
Were Coca-Cola's moves toward world domination shrewd, admirable business practices or did they cross a line into ethical eyebrow-raising territory?
He soon charmed the outside world with shrewd publicity stunts that were aimed at drawing attention to the particular danger climate change poses to the Maldives 1,200 tiny islands, barely above sea-level.
Jay Z's sold out Hard Knock Life show, along with DMX, Method Man and Redman, and the recent Drake v Lil Wayne tour have demonstrated the rap world's shrewd acceptance of the potential financial benefits of collaboration.
He still divides the world into shrewd conservatives and leftist buffoons, but in the new terminology his sort of people are now "oikophiles" (from the Greek "oiko" for house, which is the derivation of "eco"), while the rest of us are benighted "oikophobes".
Wesley: if the world is shrewd, comfortable with money, why not also people of faith?
