Word: laughter
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...film about a family gathering in a bucolic setting. That would be Dan in Real Life, in which a damaged figure, (the always excellent Steve Carell), playing a mournful widower, falls comically but painfully, in love with the wrong woman while somehow enlisting both our sympathy and our grateful laughter. It is a low-key, commercial comedy, but its people are believably eccentric instead of unbelievably nutsy, it offers an interesting twist on the basic dilemmas of romantic comedy and it finds a way of satisfying our hopes for a happy ending without descent into implausibility or travesty...
...steps are groups of men huddled around tables to watch a soccer game on one TV. An equally large, but mixed-gender throng has gathered on the other side of the bar to catch the season finale of Big Brother. The crowd is rapt with attention, often bursting into laughter or exclaiming at the screens...
...jokes. Their stuff was apolitical--but radical. It challenged the very notion of making people laugh. When Albert Brooks impersonated a mime so inept he must describe his movements, or Andy Kaufman turned on a plastic record player and lip-synched to the Mighty Mouse theme song, the laughter was uneasy or unheard. Audiences were forced to wonder: Is this supposed to be funny? And that was funny, in a new way. By renouncing the notion of the stand-up as sage and replaying the silly gags that amused them as kids, these rebels gave birth to post-funny comedy...
Everyone remembers the Star Wars Kid. How could you not? His wild gesticulating with standard golfing implements transformed him into an Internet celebrity overnight and was no doubt a popular source of laughter when the video made its debut several years ago, even before the advent of YouTube. But does anyone remember his real name? Did anyone even know his real name? And did anyone ever discover how this event changed the life of the Star Wars Kid? Probably not. The Internet stripped the boy of his name, of his very identity, and the danger of losing one?...
...recent Friday evening session, Hagen led students through a combination of traditional yoga poses, primal grunts, theatrical expressions and lots of laughter. Hagen's facial exercises include the Smiling Fish (purse your lips and smile slightly), the Marilyn (blow kisses while keeping your forehead smooth) and the Satchmo (puff out your face and transfer air from cheek to cheek). Lined up in front of the mirror, their fingers pressed into their foreheads and their tongues lolling, the participants looked deranged, but they seemed to be onto something good. "When we walk in, you can see how tired and stressed...