Word: barbers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Petric once wrote journalistic film criticism for the daily publication, "Politika," in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. His film reviews appeared in a weekly Monday supplement, and one day he was reading through it in a barbershop. "You're reading that crazy Petric," the barber observed. "Let me give you some advice: whenever he says a film is excellent, don't go, but if he says not to go to a movie, I guarantee you will enjoy it." That was the end of his career as a film reviewer...
...another excerpt, Nixon trivializes his trip to China by revealing--as you always suspected--that great heads of state meeting at the summit sound more like Floyd the barber and Andy Griffith than men of destiny deciding the course of the world. Nixon, Kissinger, Mao and Chou discuss Mao's health; Mao claims he likes rightists and makes other jokes; all agree that talking is a good thing; Chou looks at his watch. Nixon reveals that Chou was capable of sitting through long meetings in Chinese without falling asleep. These glimpses of power are fascinating, but present a pattern...
...LIKE a great idea: combining two enormously popular works into one massive play, which would cover topics ranging from romance, inequality and greed, and would even stay funny while doing it. But as wonderfully acted and produced as the Loeb's version of Robert MacDonald's adaptation of The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro is, it lacks a certain something. Maybe the idea works for breath mints, but somehow putting two, two, two plays in one just doesn't quite make...
...Barber of Seville (which comes in the first half) is a comedy, in which the intelligent barber aids a romantically inclined count (James Bundy) to gain the hand of the object of the count's affection, stealing the beautiful Rosina from under the nose of her nasty guardian (Ralph Zito). All ends well, he who laughs last laughs best, and--though we are left with a measure of sympathy for the ward-less guardian--the curtain closes on the first half with great good humor...
...Marriage of Figaro, at least as presented in this version, is a little less cutesy. To begin with, there's a major shift in mood: Figaro is not straight comedy, which The Barber certainly is. Instead, it is a fairly cynical look at marriage (the four-years-later episode of Count Almaviva and Rosina's romance), the master-servant relationship (the Count repays Figaro's first act help by demanding the droit du signeur of Figaro's bride), all made more complicated than necessary by intrigues and mishaps. The cast manages generally to overcome the mood-change by keeping...