Word: comical
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Looking for a great comic book to take with you on your next flight? Then how about these charming depictions of the story of Buddha? Osamu Tezuka (1928-89), a pioneer of the manga (Japanese comic book), added his own characters and stories to the life and times of the great spiritual leader, creating a graphic-novel epic...
...Dewaere as Gondry was in a car, with "this beautiful woman who was a mixture of three or four girls who broke my heart," and the car crashed. The scene repeated itself over and over like a film loop, Gondry's very own Groundhog Day, without Bill Murray for comic relief. "There was nothing I could do to change it," he laments. "I woke up in a sad mood, a depression." He couldn't have stayed glum for very long, because Gondry, awake, is living an altogether happier kind of dream...
...this might have lent Strange Bedfellows complexity and subtlety. Instead, it just gives the quintessentially blokey star of Crocodile Dundee the chance to camp it up; Hoges in hotpants! How does a comic pitch this potentially lively fall so dead in the water? It's tempting to blame young writer-director Dean Murphy. He has a sunny knack for observing gossip ricochet around a country town, but he lacks the worldly insight and satirical snap of a Wilder. When Vince and Ralph are instructed how to walk the talk ("Marilyn Monroe crossed with a bit of penguin"), it's like...
Looking for a great comic? Just follow Buddha. Osamu Tezuka (1928-89), a pioneer of the manga (Japanese comic book) form, added his own characters and stories to the life of the great spiritual leader, creating a graphic-novel epic. Translated into English by Vertical Inc. as an eight-volume series of stylish, $25 hardcovers, the third installment comes out this month. Though Tezuka's characters are cartoonishly cute and he frequently inserts goofy humor, the series also explores adult themes of romance and violence. Literati and pop-culture mavens alike will enjoy this manga masterwork. By Andrew D. Arnold
...were rolled into one portly fellow. PETER USTINOV, who died last week at 82, once boasted, "I have Russian, German, Spanish, Italian, French and Ethiopian blood in my veins" (his great-grandfather wedded the Princess of Ethiopia). He spoke six languages, and a few others of his own comic invention. With gifts too wide-ranging to be contained in one art form, he wrote hit plays (Romanoff and Juliet) and books of nonfiction and short stories. He could be an excellent film director (Billy Budd) and a serious Shakespearean (King Lear at Stratford, Ont.). He won Supporting Actor Oscars...