Word: comic
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...hidden reservior of intense feeling, would be more annoying if she didn't do it so superbly, exactly right. Next to her, William Macy is merely adequate, though often quite funny, as the impotent and increasingly bewildered father figure; a fine actor, he risks being typecast as a comic butt or supporting disposable. Witherspoon does an entertaining act as the '90s bad girl who begins by changing the Pleasantville world and ends by discovering that changes in herself may be in order. If her character arc is less convincing than her brother's, it's worth viewing, like the visuals...
...read too earnestly in Pleasantville an allegory of American society would be to distort its main intent, which is to please. Its political and cultural allusions are more playful than profound, and in overall tone it remains light-hearted, never leaving the comic realm. This is one of the reasons the movie succeeds so effortlessly. Great drama it may not be, but it's certainly at treat to watch...
...poor man's substitute painting. The prints were either displayed in local taverns, public notice-hanging walls or kept in a private collection. Among the assembled prints at the MFA, are both the first "pin-up girl" (a partially nude woman, her left breast exposed) and the first comic strip. Peddlers wandered, carrying mass copies of these various prints on their backs, selling them for pennies each...
...obscure piece that opened last Friday's concert was all those things. The all-Mendelssohn performance began with the overture to a comic opera, The Uncle From Boston. The overture is rarely heard, and this performance marked its Boston debut. The libretto of The Uncle From Boston has been lost, but it is always refreshing to discover and hear a composer's lesser known works, much like finding more sonnets by Shakespeare or short stories by Hemingway. The beginning of the Capriccio Brillant, Op. 22, was more lovely than brilliant. Short and sweet, it was one of Mendelssohn's three...
Aside from the comic irony of seeing her decapitate helpless ragdolls, Struthers' main contribution to the show is her name recognition. She portrays Miss Hannigan as little more than a drunk with a penchant for the laundry man, although she does have a rather entertaining drunken twitch, which starts as merely an annoyance but escalates into a full-body contortion of sorts by the final scene. Her singing is at times a high-pitched and quite realistic whine, and at others a growl worthy of the most horrible of lonely spinsters. According to the playbill, Struthers is the first...