Word: humor
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...AHEAD IN ADVERTISING. While plotting a sales campaign for a new pimple cream, a British ad exec develops a bizarre ailment: a boil on the neck that has a mouth of its own and talks back with a vengeance. With black humor and a weird, Kafkaesque sensibility, director Bruce Robinson delivers a biting satire of Thatcherite society...
...PEOPLE tell me I'm good at visual puns. I guess that's true," says photographer Elliot Erwitt on the opening page of Personal Exposures, and he undoutedly has an eye for humor. But at the same time, Erwitt is a master in capturing the subtle tragedy in everyday life. His book is a comprehensive overview of his development, published to coincide with the world tour of an exhibition of black and white photographs...
...immediate interest but can be hard to sustain for 500 pages. Happily, Theroux's hero is a man of ironic intelligence and amusing self-awareness. He believes that comedy is the "highest expression of truth" and, conversely, that the funniest things are frequently the truest. This makes for considerable humor arising from grim situations. Moreover, Parent's wanderlust means a frequent change of scenery and a liberating sense that, as the playwright Tom Stoppard put it, every exit is an entrance somewhere else...
Even so, the kids will probably not be doing it at the prom this year. Vogueing is an attitudinal affectation that mixes model-like poses with the athleticism of break dancing and the wry sophistication of gay humor. Until now it has been performed mostly by male transvestites, although hip straights make appreciative audiences in the clubs. Some are joining in. Danielle Leyshon, a waitress who vogues at the Smart Bar in Chicago, says enthusiastically that the dance can easily slip into "a battle of who looks more...
...Robinson is after more than black humor. He wants us to see this tormented body as a metaphor for a tormented body politic; the wildly successful British advertising business may be to the Thatcherian age what imperialism was to the Victorian. But here Robinson sets down his hot satirical lance and slaps a soppy poultice of preachment onto the end of his movie. It proves to be a 19th century home remedy for an ailment he has convinced us may be curable only by more up-to-date and radical means...