Word: pageants
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...show begins in a straightforward satiric vein, using the vehicle of a "Miss or Mr. American Talent" pageant to mock American commercialism and the competitive ethic. When the slimy, selfindulgent M.C. introduces the six stereotypical contestants, all familiarly insipid, we remain anchored in the comfortable world of parody. With the song "An Atypical American Family," however, parody is replaced by a rude inversion of values; to the music of "Mame," a brother who pulls wings off flies and a sister who carries a onearmed doll confess their mutual hatred in starkly unfunny terms. A similarly violent mood underlies "The Hard...
...California--land of Norman Vincent Peale-inspired small businessmen, San Clemente, sterile beauty and freeways. Smile was released about a year ago, and because of some kind of distribution problems, hasn't made it to a lot of theatres. The focus of the movie is a state beauty pageant managed by Barbara Feldon (of Get Smart fame) and judged by Bruce Dern, but that's just a jumping off point for an examination of the so-called community of Santa Rosa. The comic sensibility of director Michael Ritchie, who did Downhill Racer and The Candidate, is not quite as cynical...
...other hand, I wasn't Jewish enough to be able to give up Christmas altogether, like some kids knew. There was one girl at the private school I went to who came from a fairly religious Jewish family. She had a special dispensation to skip the Christmas pageant, and while the rest of the school rehearsed Christmas carols she would sit there silently, looking solemn and self-righteous. In a way, I suppose, her aloofness was a tacit accusation against the rest of us for participating--the school was about 10 per cent Jewish. But she never made me feel...
...John Lawrence's Rabbit & Pork: Rhyming Talk (Crowell; $6.95) revives the old cockney custom of jingling euphemisms: "Johnny Homer" to mean corner. By means of fine-lined wood engravings, Lawrence invests each miniverse with whimsy and bite (from "Inky Smudge": Judge, to "Noah's Ark": Park); his pageant of animals educates almost as much as it amuses. Perhaps the most diverting beast of the season is the dragon of Magic in the Mist (Atheneum; $4.95). Margaret Mary Kimmel's happy reptile-illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman-is the best igniter since the match...
...truly unmanageable libretto. Staunch knights, knot-headed serfs, mythological animals and cunning spirits amble around, stumbling over plot threads about thwarted romance and Freemasonry. One of Bergman's accomplishments is to take all this rich confusion, condense it by about 40 minutes and turn it into a pageant that is exuberant without ever being excessive...