Word: humors
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Most of the humor stems from the way Almodovar plays with our notions about love and relationships. He takes special delight in destroying the easy, escapist nature of most melodrama. He even overturns the convention of the damsel in distress. Maura, as the transsexual actress, is sexy and provocative--Almodovar makes the audience lust after her and want to protect her. At the same time, we are constantly reminded that she was once...
Although Almodovar's depiction of gay love is honest, it is by no means solemn. For although the sex scenes are among the most explicit and frankly erotic in recent film, gay or straight, the movie never loses its sense of humor. In the first love scene between Pablo and Antonio, Pablo tells his inexperienced admirer, "You shouldn't kiss like you're unclogging the sink...
...enjoyed even by ideological foes, Bork amiably uses smiles and quips to soften his forcefully expressed views. After a Justice Department official commented that a certain decision would be made "over my dead body," Bork noted, "To some of us, that sounded like the scenic route." His disarming humor is likely to help him seem personally sympathetic and even comfortably moderate during the televised hearings. But the prolonged wait has taken its toll, and his irritation with the drum roll of criticism sometimes prompts him to grind his teeth nervously and show flashes of anger...
What do you do if you like this stuff less than most people? The usual view is that only an inhibited, snobbish sourpuss could fail to take delight in a Grooms show. And what, the Grooms fan will say, do you have against humor? The fan has a point, in a way, since Grooms' popularity comes at least in part from the truly awful seriousness of the high-culture industry, its inability to see how weird its own solipsism and sanctimony can look. The mock-religious cloud that formed around abstract expressionism when it was becoming America's first imperial...
...improbable and even fanciful, but the feelings expressed by the characters and their sense of time (running up, running down and running out) are, without exception, genuine. There is nothing titillating or vulgar about the PM's confession of missing Charles Darke because of loving him. And McEwan's humor is never simply topical. "I can't go anywhere alone," says the government leader of the impossible romance. "Bodyguards apart, I have to take the nuclear hotline, and that means at least three engineers. And an extra driver. And someone from Joint Staff." "Disarm," Stephen urges, "for the sake...