Word: antic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Paik is the sage and antic father of video as an art form-"the George Washington of the movement," as another experimental artist, Frank Gillette, dubbed him at the end of the '60s. He began by emigrating from his native Seoul in the '50s, first to Tokyo and then to Germany, to study music. In Germany he met Composer John Cage, that perennially controversial guru of the avantgarde, and he was soon busily involved in the multimedia "events" and benignly neo-Dadaist actions of a European artists' group that called itself, for its commitment to change, Fluxus...
...taking in an old I Love Lucy show. Perhaps they are watching the most famous episode of Lucy, the birth in 1953 of Little Ricky. Frantic father-to-be Ricky Ricardo wants to cancel a performance of his nightclub act to join his wife at the hospital; Lucy, whose antic zaniness has been transmuted into the madonna-like calm then attributed to every expectant mother, sends him off to work with the unchallengeable claim: "You can't be where I am, anyway." And sure enough, when he takes her to the maternity ward, a nurse insists that the Ricardos...
Readers who cannot solve these riddles represent an even rarer species than the Mockery. But the author's aim is not suspense or, in the end, farce. Despite some antic set pieces and a detailed sense of place, the naturalist declares his true intention in a Tailpiece-translation: public service commercial. "If you have found the book amusing," says Durrell, "and if you appreciate the fact that the world, and its wildlife, is being steadily and ruthlessly decimated ... I wonder if you would like to help us ... at the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust?" The proposal is irregular, but Durrell...
They give the play a dimension of humanity that redeems the occasional lapse into cliches and arch frivolity. It is interesting to speculate about whether Crimes of the Heart would seem so antic in spirit if its lines were delivered in the brisk, flinty inflections of Bangor, Me., instead of the languorous resonances of Hazelhurst, Miss. But that is idle speculation, since Hazelhurst is so beguiling...
...stopping dead for long derisory skits featuring Napoleon (Ian Holm), Robin Hood (John Cleese) and Agamemnon (Sean Connery). It misuses Holm's talents, underuses Cleese's and doesn't use Connery at all-there's no way to turn him into a figure of antic misanthropy. The film finally regains its footing, with the supernal battle between a dithery Supreme Being (Ralph Richardson) and a technocratic Evil Genius (David Warner) who has his own ideas about creating the world ("I would have started with lasers, 8 o'clock on Day One!"). But by then...