Word: buffoon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stunning, providing a brilliant contrast in which Caesar emerges as the master spirit of his age, surrounded by men of lesser vision who do not begin to approach his stature. The costuming neutralizes Shaw's famous criticism that this play turns the giant of ancient history into a cavilling buffoon. Goodall's Caesar is masterful, dominating the play even after his assassination, as he stalks silently around the stage watching the defeat of Brutus...
...Brutus, "This was the noblest Roman of them all". In this performance, though, the action of this play is resolved by Caesar's funeral, and the last two acts become denouement, in which Brutus gets his inevitable punishment. Caesar, not Brutus, is the hero, Brutus, not Caesar, the buffoon...
...Driesell brand of showmanship depends on Maryland winning for its validity, and if the Terrapins don't win, or don't win impressively. Driesell is made out to be a buffoon. After the Terrapins had compiled six marginally impressive victories in seven games against weak competition in December, and lost the seventh by 20 points at Virginia, Sports Illustrated staffer Curry Kirkpatrick unloaded on Driesell and Maryland with a fairly unbridled display of sarcasm...
What prevents audience atrophy during all this is a recurring, if not pervasive sense of irony. Director Reichenbach appears throughout the film bobbing around and asking inane questions ("What means for you vibrations?") in heavily accented French. He becomes a buffoon in his own movie. Toward the end of Caravan, there is a long scene at Antioch College during which the students denounce the film makers as frauds, the caravan members as dupes and the executives of Warner Bros, as flat-out bandits. From the evidence at hand, it's hard to disagree. The gnomish sabotage of the film...
FOOLS are two leftovers from A Thousand Clowns. The girl has changed from Barbara Harris to Katharine Ross, but the man remains Jason Robards. Once again he plays the crumpled buffoon, out of step with society, delivering loud, whimsical broadsides against such well-riddled targets as the Establishment, traffic and the FBI. His paramour is 25 years his junior, and her attachment for such a droning bore may be ascribed to callowness or to a classic Electra complex. But she is still the dream-child of The Graduate and the only visible excuse for an overblown farce that collapses into...