Word: deadpan
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...doing hysteria in a narrow range, and Buscemi scores as a sick goofus whom one witness IDs as "funny-lookin'--more than most people even." There's enough gore to make this a Mystery Violence Theater. After some superb mannerist films, the Coens are back in the deadpan realist territory of Blood Simple, but without the cinematic elan. Fargo is all attitude and low aptitude. Its function is to italicize the Coens' giddy contempt toward people who talk and think Minnesotan. Which is, y'know, kind of a bad deal...
...WASTED!" does not pretend to examine an insane asylum, but rather an ordinary halfway house. Sarnat is more attuned to moments of deadpan humor than sticking to feelings of absolute despair and frustration. Like a talk-show, "WASTED!" has an episodic quality; the scenes are quick and short, with numerous fade-outs in between. Some of the actors, including Potier and Jacobs, have enough savvy to know that as much as their characters are supposed to be real people, their personas are meant to subvert the stereotypical notions of estranged youth...
MOVIES . . . FARGO: After some superb mannerist films, filmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have returned to deadpan realist territory in their new film their native Minnesota. But the derisive new true-crime comedy should really be subtitled 'How to Laugh at People Who Talk Minnesotan,' says TIME's Richard Corliss. The film -- which has not much at all to do with Fargo, North Dakota -- is about the difficulty real folks have pulling off crimes that always go smoothly in fiction. Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) needs a lot of cash, so he hires two thugs (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare...
Happily, no hard feelings remained. With this issue, Trillin's deadpan humor and lucid prose return to the pages of TIME as a regular feature. He will be writing a weekly column on a characteristically far-reaching range of subjects. "Sometimes it'll be about Washington," he says. "Sometimes it'll be about what's in my basement." Whatever he turns his attention to is usually just fine with his readers. "Trillin is one of the great delights of American journalism," says managing editor Walter Isaacson. "He has the eyes and ears of a great reporter...
...laid out in this record of sociopathology, Hasselbach's conversion seems less a moral rebirth than simply the end of an unpleasant, unpromising stage of life. Part of this can be blamed on the book's remorselessly deadpan style. Part is owing to the narrative's unnerving emotional detachment, "an awful condition I still fight against," he admits. Understandably Herr Hasselbach has much from which to detach himself...