Word: joking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...intellectual shocker its creators no doubt intended, Planet of the Apes is a joke. But the joke is funny enough often enough to sustain the picture through a series of embarrassing lapses in logic, some third-rate color photography, and sets worthy of the more outlandish oriental monster movies. Viewed with tolerance, and press passes, Planet of the Apes can be appreciated alternately as low comedy, high adventure and, at moments, serious science fiction. In other words...
That is the script's main-and almost only-joke. As the story's central character, Actor Segal shows flashes of a comic talent hitherto unexplored by Hollywood. But what picture there is for stealing is burgled by Wiseman with his portrayal of a stereotypical literateur. As lofty as Edmund Wilson, he pronounces Jehovah-like judgments on literature and humanity, while for his livelihood, he caters to audiences of culture-ridden housewives who beg, "Please, my Debbie wanted me to ask you about Philip Roth...
...just a university freshman who can't understand President Johnson's reasoning. What kind of joke is this war? A war where you don't bomb the enemy's capital but they take over our embassy in downtown Saigon? A war where you don't bomb the enemy's only supply harbor is idiotic...
...With only 1,860,000 members, Poland's Communist Party is now proportionately one of the smallest ruling Communist parties in the world. Naturally, the party's malaise tends to become the butt of the very humor that the regime fears and seeks to ban. As a joke making the rounds in Warsaw last week had it, a popularity poll of top Polish leaders is now impossible. Reason: no one remembers who they are any more. The government was not laughing at that one, either, but there was not much it could do about...
...Turkey. The incredible story appeared last week as part of an otherwise sobersided biography of the late British diplomat, Sir Pierson Dixon, written by his son. Before the Turks could protest, Tory M.P. Sir Charles Mott-Radclyffe, a former diplomat, explained that it was all a 30-year-old joke perpetrated by himself. He had written a phony cable about Atatürk's dying offer as a satire on diplomatese and shown it to Sir Pierson, his colleague. Dixon thought it so funny he took it home and stuck it, among his papers, where his unsuspecting son found...