Word: deadpan
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...cowpoke orders him at gunpoint to smile; after considering whether he'd rather die, Keaton fingers the corners of his mouth into an awful grimace. But this blank visage was a versatile comic instrument. The giant eyes spoke all manner of emotions: ardor, terror, despair, sheer mulishness. The Keaton deadpan is stoic, heroic and as thoroughly modernist as a Beckett play or a Bauhaus facade. Next to him, Chaplin is a Victorian coquette, Lloyd a glad-handing politician...
Heidegger, Heidegger, and more Heidegger drones on, while video images flash by in lively contrast to the deadpan textual underpinning. Philosophical discourse takes such an incredible amount of concentration and linear, logical thinking, that the flashing images and spatial nature of the cinematic form disrupts Heidegger's text more than they complement it. This brings one of the exhibit's main conflicts to light. We are a society torn between discourses, one written and one visual, and our own delight in the visual is juxtaposed with our own delight in the visual is juxtaposed with our guilt-laden tendency...
...prepubescent Jason. Terrio's body language, facial expressions, even unkempt hair are so appropriate to the character that it is impossible to convince yourself that he is not actually twelve years old. His Jason is not overly cute or naive, but rather aware, sarcastic, and capable of a deadpan humor to match the rest of the cast...
...carrying the body of Nathan's grandfather, a U.S. Senator, from Washington to Knoxville. Aubrey was not welcome aboard, and the Tucker sisters, now young matrons, are particularly appalled by his efforts to join the funeral party. The journey is one of Taylor's best comic set pieces, a deadpan account of how the drunken antics of the male mourners caused a series of unseemly disasters...
...Fellowes, a well-meaning method actor who can only be described as dumb. Zelman compels mention of the film version of "Noises Off." His characterization of Freddy is unmistakably like Christopher Reeves' in the same role. Freddy craves motivation for his every movement on stage, prompting Lloyd into a deadpan Freudian probe of Freddy's character's relationship with groceries...