Word: deadpan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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After sex the sparkle of their courtship evaporates, and Starting Over loses its appeal. Rather than give Reynolds the rein to flex his demonstrated talent for deadpan humor, Brooks script smothers him in pretentious sensitivity. Worse, the improbable plot twists like a Neil Simon rendition of The Courtship of Eddie's Father...
VLADIMIR VOINOVICH'S deadpan style in this collection of stories echoes Gogol and other ironists you might remember from quick tours of Russia's endless literaly steppes. But the sympathetic eye the author casts over his creations--as though their follies somehow remind him of his own--has just as few antecedents in Russian literature as anywhere else...
...time clock, Shorty," he does, literally, and with style. Mike, played by Dennis Quade, is a pretty standard version of the hot-rodding, tough former quarterback--you last saw him in American Graffiti--but in Breaking Away he's more vulnerable, and more honest. Ciro, the clown with the deadpan expression, is as good as his company--an astonishing set of performances for a gang of unknowns...
...Laws is an acid satire of the incompetence of America's intelligence "community." Falk has a picture of John F. Kennedy on his wall with the inscription, "At least we tried-thanks for everything-JFK." "You mean you were involved in the Bay of Pigs?" Arkin asks, deadpan. "I was the one who came up with the idea," Falk proudly replies. This is a CIA agent who confirms the worst charges that Congress and the press have brought against the agency-a liar and bumbler, he seems to act without orders and puts civilians in danger...
There are some bright nuggets here and there. William Daniels has a hilarious deadpan scene where, as G. Gordon Liddy, he outlines his outrageous schemes to trap '72 Democratic Convention delegates with call girls. As the President, Rip Torn does a gleefully vicious Nixon impersonation, whether he is re-enacting private Oval Office conversations (with bleeps in place of expletives) or declaring to the world that he is "not a crook...