Word: deadpan
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Dick Francis, 60, says deadpan that his debut as a professional jockey came at the age of five, when an older brother bet him sixpence that he couldn't take their Welsh pony over a hedge while sitting backward in the saddle. After five falls, daring Dick collected. The steeplechase riders he has written about in 21 novels have a lot in common with the young Francis. They are dogged, not necessarily the best, but decent and vulnerable; they eat a lot of mud and get mauled frequently and badly. But they do collect: the bruises, the booty...
Brady's humor ranges from jolly quips to droll deadpan. Shortly before the shooting, he was the guest at one of Washington's institutionalized breakfasts with reporters. Instead of the light banter and gentle questions that tend to open such discussions, he was immediately slung a sharp query on conflicts within the Administration. After a pause he responded with perfect poker face: "Where has foreplay gone?" At last month's Gridiron Club dinner, an event that features journalists performing parodies of politicians, a Brady impersonator lampooned the report that Nancy Reagan had opposed his appointment because he was not "good...
...plebian Lady, but Francis Gitter has a compelling presence, rivetingly sad eyes, and moments of gaunt, tranquil beauty as Aladdin's mother, and Vincent Canzoneri is a wittily forthright Scholar Wu. As the Grand Wazir, David Prum reveals a precious comic style, a sublimely funny blend of ham and deadpan, and Jenny Cornuelle, a most impudently regal actress, is a flashing, mesmerizing Sultan. Maybe best of all is the Princess of Bonnie Zimmering, who has never seemed as exquisitely sculpted, as delicately, opalescently winsome; she has developed a sly and bewitching way of infusing her lines with a touch...
...their fatty paint, are like rebuses or allegories, swarming with references to movies and their auteurs. Peter Frank, the Guggenheim's guest curator, who has a marked taste for indirect and elliptical art, has also included an interesting painter from New Orleans, Jim Richard, 37. Richard's deadpan views of Southern suburbia do not justify Frank's claim that they possess "the most astoundingly lambent light this side of a Caspar David Friedrich sunset." That must be the most astoundingly nutty thing written by a talented critic about a talented artist so far this winter. But they...
They would proceed from a strong premise-The Incredible Shrinking Man, a deadpan 1957 sci-fi thriller-and give it a feminist twist. While the original protagonist shrank from a dose of radiation, Tomlin's happy homemaker would suffer from exposure to the mysterious ingredients in supermarket products: everything from "tumescent tissue of bull scrotum" to a mad scientist's most corrosive chemicals. The audience would know when to laugh: at the sight of a madcap chase, at a friendly gorilla, at Talk Show Host Mike Douglas. The resulting movie is sometimes very funny. It also represents...