Word: comical
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...Snow Angels is built on the same yearnings and desperation, the same threat of eventual violence; but, happily, it has an emotional density that trumps its familiarity. Winter is approaching in a small town where the high school band teacher (a brief role played with curt comic brio by Tom Noonan) shouts challenges at the students: "Do you have a sledgehammer in your heart? Are you ready to be my sledgehammer?" The hammers of hell beat in the hearts of these frosty folk; for Snow Angels, like a bunch of other films set in cold climates (The Ice Storm...
...redundancies. However, the structure is marred by several characters who are introduced but whose paths through the book never really resolve or interact with the central motion of the plot in any meaningful way. Though a great deal of effort is made to construct the character of Bing Beiderbixxe, comic book artist and nerd extraordinaire, he’s never able to take shape as a character in himself or to contribute meaningfully to the story; he remains a bit part of Bock’s overlarge collage of Las Vegas personalities.Of these personalities, it’s notable that...
...category is Colbert’s “The Heart is a Choking Hazard.” Colbert, one of the book’s headliners and the winner of the Associated Press’s 2007 “Celebrity of the Year” for his comic genius, writes a surprisingly disappointing chapter. His piece works on one gag only: at the beginning of the chapter he has an author’s note saying that his wife blacked out any words that were too revealing or defamatory. Thus, Colbert sets up the reader to fill...
Adrian Tomine is a critically acclaimed cartoonist best known for his comic book series “Optic Nerve” and his soulful illustrations, which have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, and Rolling Stone. His graphic novel “Shortcomings” is listed among The New York Times’ “100 Notable Books of 2007.” Tomine, who dicussed “Shortcomings” at the Brattle Theatre yesterday, sat down with The Crimson to talk about education and inspiration, comic book aesthetics and culture, and representing race and gender...
Ralph Nader has become the great tragicomic figure of American politics: tragic because he may have indirectly delivered the 2000 election to George W. Bush, who has worked tirelessly to oppose virtually everything Nader spent his life promoting, and comic because every four years, he seems to forget what happened last time and trot back out, blissfully unaware of the impacts (or lack thereof) of his previous attempts. And this image, in turn, has become the face of third party candidacies in America. Every time he runs, Nader further assures the voting public that independent candidates are benign, irrelevant eccentrics...