Word: comical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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With Matador (1986) and Law of Desire (1987), Almodovar displayed his brazen assurance of style and vaulted from comic realism to soap-operatic mannerism. Matador is a contemporary vampire story: an ex-bullfighter and a woman lawyer, believing that death is the ultimate climax, impale each victim on the cold steel of their lust. Law of Desire draws a bent triangle: a gay movie director, his transsexual sister (Maura) and her adopted child's rightful mother (played by a Spanish drag queen). Revelations of murder, incest, suicide and lotsa hot sex follow, but the tone remains knowing, tender. As Matador...
...that animated certain films of Jean Cocteau, Kenneth Anger, John Waters and R.W. Fassbinder. But Almodovar also looks back in glamour to '50s Hollywood, when Rock Hudson could comfort a dying Jane Wyman in one film, then woo perky Doris Day in another. Thus his pictures are both bleakly comic and defiantly romantic, hipper than tomorrow and nostalgic for a pre-AIDS era when love's most toxic complication was a broken heart. "To classify movies is to impoverish them," he says. "Law of Desire was about a gay couple. But passion is the subject. I was trying to tell...
These are assuredly old and durable subjects, yet ones that Wilson probes with a comic irony sharpened on the modern world. Inevitably, his work has been compared to the novels of Evelyn Waugh. There are similarities but only "up to a point," as a subordinate in Waugh's Scoop responded when Lord Copper blustered that Yokohama is the capital of Japan. Wilson's comedy is more tolerant than that of the malicious master. Both authors, however, project intimidating confidence in their styles and possess a technical virtuosity that makes the difficult look easy...
Take a break, flake. Some of us grew up reading comic books, sports stories, science fiction or other literature that might not please Hirsch's dignified tastes. We read about what we liked, and that's how we learned to read. If children test poorly on a reading comprehension passage about, say, the Mongolian tree iguana, and well on one about a space taxi, it's because they are more interested in space than in life sciences, not necessarily because have read extensively on the subject. Literacy provides the freedom to discover and decide our own interests, which Hirsch constrains...
...know what Hall can do. His 13-week stint on the Late Show was a ratings success and ended only because Fox had previously committed itself to the Wilton North Report (yet another late-night failure). A Cleveland native, Hall started his show-biz career as a stand-up comic and became host of the TV series Solid Gold. But he claims he has wanted to do a talk show since age twelve: he calls Carson his "idol" and, like Johnny, was a child magician. When Paramount TV initially offered him his own show, Hall was reluctant...