Word: facials
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...same time suitably wide-eved and innocent. David Gullette as the Thief-Taker General scowls meanly and reads his lines with precise meter and intonation. Senelick is good at developing expert character actors; Dribbling Wilf ("a criminal mastermind of the first water"), played by E. Mackenzie, has remarkable facial control and an admirable ability to salivate. The Incredible Porty McFigg (Lawrence F. Uhl) cats glass, strangles rats with his teeth, roars and grunts and pounds in his pornography-painted chest, all with considerable glee...
Wendy Walker's expressive self-portrait, dramatic in its russet, green and purple facial tones, is a forceful and moving expression. David Fitcher's silkscreen of a contorted American flag lying amid a claret and orange landscape ably controls, through an appreciation of the organizing effect of color, both its political and aesthetic context...
...second half of the film undermines all that precedes it. When we first saw the characters, they were apparitions floating up from suburbia. There was a beautiful, almost hallucinatory, effect in those early facial close-ups against a blank background. But once past histories and individual psychologies are filled in, the dreamlike quality vanishes. As the film becomes more "rational" and defined, it becomes less moving...
...real problem is that even after he excites our interest in plot, he refuses to change his subjective style. He does not show events but responses to events. There is, for instance, one scene where the three men are at a dice board. The camera focuses on their facial expressions, and we never actually see what happens with the dice. We are, of course, meant to infer actions from character reactions. And this would be a legitimate technique if Cassavetes were not constantly implying some larger, more important, context, some intricate narrative which lies just beyond sight...
Certain shows incite conditioned-reflex laughter. A quip rings a bell on stage, or a performer twitches a facial muscle, and the audience laughs, in much the same way that Pavlov's dogs salivated. The playgoer has been given nothing in the way of genuine comic nourishment. He has merely been cajoled into an empty-bellied laugh...