Word: comical
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that all. The tone of the play is one of relentlessly evenhanded irony, both tragic and comic, a very elusive mood to sustain. Finally, there is Brecht's thesis, that war is a continuation of business as usual. He strips its so-called heroes and victims of their epaulets of duty, honor and grief and exposes them as avaricious brokers on the floor of a bloodstained international stock exchange...
...grown into a small but lively stable company. With Peter Mark, 37, as its artistic director and conductor, the group draws its orchestra and chorus from the nearby area and casts young stars from the regional opera circuit in principal roles. V.O.A. began by wooing its audience with bubbly comic stalwarts (The Barber of Seville) and Puccini tearjerkers (Madama Butterfly...
Witty and energetic, he has great appeal among the young; he keeps a ventriloquist's dummy in his baronial office to entertain visiting schoolchildren. Kucinich has a large collection of comic books and has seen Star Wars six times. He is a master at manipulating the media. On the night that he edged out the official Democratic candidate for mayor by only 2,900 votes of the 180,000 cast, Kucinich was in the newsroom of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, where he once worked as a copy boy. While photographers clicked their cameras, he sent the edited story...
...Chairman conducted against Confucius, the nation's exponent of moderation and ethical values. Schoolchildren were taught to denounce the philosopher, while their elders were obliged to chant imprecations against him in public demonstrations. Posters sprang up around the country portraying Confucius as a rapacious villain. One widely circulated comic strip showed a leering Confucius watching slaves being massacred. Red Guards stormed into the village of Chu Fu, where he was born 2,500 years ago, and destroyed the shrine erected in his honor. The People's Daily exulted: "Confucianism is dead once and for all." A typical broadcast...
...occasion House Calls gets a fast comic beat going, only to have its plot bring the laughs to an abrupt halt. The screenwriters have not found a way to integrate their hero's hospital shenanigans with the love story, and they build their narrative around the kind of forced farcical coincidences that went out of style with I Love Lucy. Howard Zieff, the talented director of Slither and Hearts of the West, works diligently to paper over the rough spots; he is an enviably good craftsman. Yet even he cannot rescue House Calls once it starts to become heartwarming...