Word: comicalities
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...that headline writers refer to eliot spitzer with comic-book-hero honorifics like "the Enforcer" or "Sheriff of Wall Street," it's worth remembering that when the New York State attorney general began his breakthrough investigation of Merrill Lynch in 2001, he wasn't sure what he was doing. A general suspicion about the veracity of investment bankers' advisories had prompted Spitzer to launch a bit of a fishing expedition into Merrill's records. It wasn't turning up much, however, until early 2002, when Eric Dinallo, Spitzer's top aide on the project, came into his office and showed...
...rich. Then, in 1948, the Tuesday-night Texaco Star Theater exploded like a shtick of nitro, with an assault of vaudeville skits, ancient gags and a man who often dressed as a woman. Suddenly everybody had to have a television--all because a middle-aged comic with manic energy and a desperate need to please was making a fool of himself, live, in America's living rooms. Subtle as a spray of seltzer, Berle dominated the young medium's ratings for years, at his peak winning 80% of the viewing audience. Eventually, TV grew up--anyway, it grew older...
Then Washington turns into Gaffeland, and what happens next can be comic. Both kinds of gaffe--regular and supersize--set the stage for festivals of disingenuousness and outright dishonesty. In some ways, the most honest reaction to the brouhaha has been that of Lott himself. His position has been, "Oh, c'mon, I didn't mean it." And surely he didn't mean it, at least consciously. Even if he is a racist, he had no reason to want to say so. Lott must sincerely and understandably feel blindsided. Since when are the fawning remarks of some politician at another...
Sure. But to involve us with its characters and its inevitable happy ending, the movie requires some interruption--unexpected dizziness, a crazy comic outburst--that would disrupt its complacent reliance on the stalest of conventions...
...than all right, because Carl Hanratty is wonderfully played by Tom Hanks. He wears half-horn-rims and a dorky little hat, speaks in a grating Boston accent and tends to spend his Christmas Eves at the office eating Chinese takeout and obsessing about Abagnale. It's a delicious comic portrayal, though not more so than Leonardo DiCaprio's charming impersonation of Abagnale, which is simultaneously naive and knowing. Abagnale's life is shadowed by his failed father (played with melancholic anger by a superb Christopher Walken), who had the spirit of a con artist but none of the breed...