Word: mania
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...latest outburst of spy mania, the English may be said to have embarked upon the last stages of the long drawn-out obsequies of the upper classes. Never again, we may be sure, shall we hear any serious suggestion that so-and-so, being a gentleman, may be relied on to tell the truth, be loyal to his country and behave with sexual propriety. The eclipse of the gentleman has happened stage by stage, as did that of the medieval knight at arms, with P.O. Wodehouse playing the part of Cervantes in affectionately revealing the absurdity of knight errantry...
Cross the wild and crazy humor of Steve Martin with the well-calculated mania of Carl Reiner and what do you get? A hyper hybrid movie called The Jerk. About a weirdo white raised by a poor black Southern family, who;hearing his first Lawrence Welk record, hits the road north to find his own kind of music. "All they played when I was a kid," explains Martin, a.k.a. the Jerk, "was blues." Martin mints a fortune by inventing nonslip eyeglasses, loses it when Reiner, in a walk-on as an irate consumer, brings a successful suit in behalf...
McGee-McGraw stumbles into the camp and is immediately captured. After being forced to murder one of the terrorist group, he is tentatively accepted by the crazies, nine distinctly characterized men and women who have come to mania from all over the map. After a harrowing indoctrination, "Dads," as the kids call him, finds out that they have blown his cover. He has no choice but to blast his way out, killing all his captors-and nearly blowing his mind. It is the most intense and savage narrative that MacDonald has ever written. As for McGee, he recovers in time...
...only character not affected by Sellars' mania is Skripkin, the defrosted man. Alone in his cell, an object of curiosity and disgust to the neo-socialist zombies, Skripkin is a solitary figure of humanity in a commercialized, sanitized, and bureaucratized world. Chris Clemenson as Skripkin has the only real character role in the entire production--the other actors are indistinguishable screaming mummies. Led to center stage by the head zombie to be ogled at by the socialist multitudes and to utter a few 'human-like' sounds, Clemenson's speech is a touching, evocative moment in a production otherwise devoid...
...rest of the Great American Pasttime has moved into kingdoms of billboard-mania, architectural nausea, and modern-day dull. Perhaps the fact that this pair of ballparks also happen to be two of the oldest active structures in the major leagues may have something to do with their special characters. Nonethless, these baseball museums stand far above the rest when it comes to nostalgia and just a good old day at the ballgame...