Word: element
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Harvard Film Archive. Carpenter Center.$5 for students. "Loafing and Camouflage" at 7p.m. A most humorous presentation of a difficultperiod during the first months of 1967 in Greece,exerting laughter as the natural reaction tooppression and loss of freedom. With aconsiderable biographical element, the filmnarrates the antics of a group of soldiers who aredoing their military service in a televisionstation belonging to the Armed Forces. Pregnantwith satire and grotesque situations, the film wasone of the biggest popular successes of thecontemporary Greek cinema, after the fall of thecolonies...
Making subtle references to such theater big-wigs as Antonin Artaud and David Merrick throughout, Levin, like Altman, adds a certain element of inside humor to his work. Picking up on and, more importantly, understanding Levin's allusions allows audience members a most gratifying sense of satisfaction. This "I know something you don't know" component somehow compensates for the feeling that Levin otherwise seems to be out to trick...
Danny Elfman is as much in his element here as Burton. A frequent Burton contributor, his soundtracks have finally found the most ideal visuals possible. Blending the hurdy-gurdy eeriness of Halloween with the jingle-bell enthusiasm of Christmas songs yields a varied collection of hysterical musical numbers. They range from festive yuletide riffs to a Cab Calloway parody sung by the aptly named Oogie Boogie...
...makers of this movie, though, have made the deadly mistake of trying to present realistically a story which would seem more plausible with an element of abstraction. They've included a few truly bizarre sex scenes, which probably would be better left to the imagination of the audience. As it is, you spend less time thinking about race and sex fantasies than about exactly what these two were doing in bed, and exactly what Gallimard thought they were doing...
...even be a genetic explanation for the occurrence of homosexuality in populations. Professor E.O. Wilson in his book, On Human Nature, says that there is, "a strong possibility that homosexuality is normal in a biological sense, that it is a distinctive beneficent behavior that evolved as an important element of early human social organization...