Word: humorously
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...omnipresent prostitutes. The Threepenny Opera echoed that city. Vaguely based on John Gay's 18th century original, the German libretto by Poet Bert Brecht (now a propaganda wheel in East Germany) had a vicious underdog snarl ("First fill our bellies, then talk morality") and magnificent, vulgar humor. Like the rest of the work, Mack the Knife* was a bitter satire of society and of schmalzy, popular music; it gave a ragtime catalogue of murder, arson and rape...
Critic Pritchett concedes that Joyce had humor and "the imagination to turn his squalid people into giants first. No one can say that the characters of Ulysses are trivial in dimension, even though their preoccupations are mean, food-stained, dreary and unelevating. His people are Celtic monsters, encumbered by the squalor of their enormous burden of fleshly life-enormous because it is so detailed-and the dreadful, slow, image-spawning of their literal minds . . . One can see that, in Joyce's imitators, the interior monologue was a blow for democracy, a rather dreary one; the fact that...
...whole, Mrs. Elizabeth ("Buffie") Stevenson Ives. wife of Career Diplomat Ernest Ives (now retired), has managed to avoid both sisterly gush and campaign-year platitudes. Author Ives was helped by a professional magazine writer. Hildegarde Dolson, but the book shows an authentic freshness. Buffie also displays a wry humor, as when she tells of the Republican friend who suggested she call the book The Egghead...
...must have realized that Dead Reckoning was not a "gun-gutter-gal" thriller. Although Bogart is periodically covered by guns, blood, and Elizabeth Scott, it is impossible to take the movie seriously. This is not a flaw, since Dead Reckoning is a great if unintentional comedy. Most of the humor comes from double meanings and the ensuing snickers from the audience. The snickers become howls when Bogart gives his deadpan comments on ludicrous situations. (After an all-encompassing embrace with Lizabeth Scott he notes, "I hate every inch of her." And he should know...
Cosi is particularly suited to translation because of its talkiness. And while the text used by director Boris Goldovsky has its disappointing moments, these are more than compensated for by the immediacy of the humor and understanding of the 18th century intention. The story centers around two army officers Guglielmo and Gernando and their philosopher-friend Don Alfonso. The Don, challenging the fidelity of the soldiers' betrothed, proves to them the fundamental frailty of human nature...