Word: deadpan
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...ushered to their seats by such notables as Paul Newman, Shirley MacLaine and Julie Christie. But Beatty's piece de resistance was the reunion of three split-up groups of stars: Peter, Paul and Mary, sounding as unified as ever; Mike Nichols and Elaine May, delivering their own deadpan political satire; and Simon and Garfunkel, re-creating Bridge over Troubled Water, which may be destined to become Senator McGovern's campaign song. "We feel we are laboring at a disadvantage in comparison with other groups on this program," Nichols remarked. "They quarreled viciously and broke up only...
DELILLO'S NOVEL operates through deadpan-absurdist humor, and brute suspense. Names, conversations, non-sequitur events become progressively more other-worldly (sub-rather than sur-real) and the concatenations of bewildering vignettes are glued together only by the reader's curiosity. But all the while, DeLillo demonstrates his golden ear for the tin and tinsel of Americanese, and many of his dialogues skewer perfectly the soft spots in academic double-talk, adolescent vagueness, the jargon of nuclear warfare (as in Herman Kahn's own book of the dead. On Thermonuclear War), public relations yes-speak, and the excruciatingly serious military...
...apparent naivete. He is a painter of frozen pleasures, held in ironic parentheses as though behind glass-the artificial but absorbingly hedonistic blue of Los Angeles swimming pools, the plastic palms, the flat glitter of light on a shower stall or a street facade. It is all painted deadpan, and Hockney's poker-faced style, coupled with his liking for artifacts as subjects, has given rise to the illusion that he is an English Pop artist. But unlike Pop, his work is not concerned with advertising or blare or mass production...
...brand-new myth. How did he get the role of Michael?, someone asks. "Oh, I can't talk about that," he replies, voice swollen with meaning. How did he feel playing that murderous restaurant scene? "To kill two people is really an incredible thing, quite an experience"--deadpan. People laugh nervously, impressed. It doesn't seem to occur to them that Pacino wasn't born with those hard Corleone eyes, that even, noncommital Corleone voice. He is, in fact, a rather poetic-looking man, small and wiry, with Pierrot eyes and a voice colored by a Bronx accent just slight...
...appeal runs deeper than its individual facets would seem to justify. The plot never transcends the ape-meets-girl, ape-gets-girl, ape-loses-girl framework. We have to assume the purity of Kong's love for Ann. Anything more carnal raises insuperable anatomical difficulties. Except for the deadpan delivery of a few antique cliches, the acting is entirely forgetable. Fay Wray screams very well, but the range of her talent ends at the top of her register. Special effects do retain much if not all of its wizardry. But the movie's charm comes from more than technical proficience...