Word: comics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Truly comic characters appear onstage about as often as there is a lunar eclipse. That is what makes the arrival of Norman, the pint-sized anarchist of Alan Ayckbourn's trilogy, an occasion of happy terror. The most satisfying laughs are those induced by determined worms, and Norman is an Attila of the worm world...
...year old Buddy O'Neil immediately reminds fans of comic-book hero Clark Kent. Mild-mannered and unassuming, the bespectacled mentor has the "patience of a saint," according to one player. When the subject of his career comes up, O'Neil blushes and suggests that the conversation move onto a discussion of the players...
...aware of these self-betrayals. According to Kubrick, Barry's silence also implies that "he is not very bright," he is an overreacher who "gets in over his head in situations he doesn't fully understand." Though a certain dimness makes him a less obviously comic figure than he is in the book, it also makes him a more believable one. And it permits Kubrick to demonstrate, without shattering the movie's tone, Barry's two nearly saving graces-physical gallantry and desperate love of his only child, whose death is the film's emotional...
Barbara Hammer is a feminist filmmaker with a rather bizarre sense of humor. Her short film, Menses, supposedly takes a wry, comic look at the disagreeable aspects of menstruation. There are, indeed, a few amusing moments in it, but for the most part the film consists of naked women standing on a hilltop, legs spread apart, with a most unusual, watery, lurid pinkish substance gusing down their legs. The humorous highlights are a mock communion scene in which codeine tablets are taken in place of wafers and menstrual blood is drunk in lieu of wine, and when some woman with...
...directorial shortcoming that stems in part from the datedness of musical comedy conventions themselves is the roughness of transitions between comic and serious moments. An index of Cadiff's failure to effect these transitions is the laughter with which the audience greets the opening of "Ohio"--the sisters' supposedly poignant questioning of their wisdom in leaving home...