Word: rhinocerosity
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Most of the Asiatic folk medicines sold in San Francisco's Chinatown are harmless. Sliced deer horn and powdered tiger penis, which believers in mystical medicine take to increase virility, are unlikely to hurt anything but the buyer's pocketbook. Neither are any of the 58 listed ingredients...
Ionesco described the play as an anti-Nazi drama. But, more broadly, it exposes the collective hysteria that lies beneath the thin veneer of reason covering modern society. The play is still more complex than a simple attack on mindless conformity. It questions what resistance to conformity really means. Because...
The film does have some funny scenes. Zero Mostel's characterization of a fastidious gentleman, slowly changing into a rhinoceros before our eyes, is wonderful. His extraordinary facial expressions and contortions transform him into a wild, snorting beast. He begins charging around his bedroom smashing furniture and eating plants. Unfortunately...
Wilder is a properly meek and appropriately gentle Stanley. Like Mostel, he makes the most of his watered-down part. His big scene, the final assertion of his humanity, is blighted by the same gimmickry that plagues Mostel's transformation scene. Having acknowledged that he can never become a rhinoceros...
O'Horgan, who has directed Absurd plays before, says that "The 'absurd' style has always rested uneasily with the naturalism of film." His production has not made a very successful accomodation of the two. The banal absurdity of his comedy version of Rhinoceros is amusing, but forceless. Relying on traditional...