Word: sendup
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...1970s its film industry produced a number of anti-Communist films; Dachimawa Lee is a parody of these gung-ho, better-dead-than-Red melodramas. That might register only as more grousing from the artistic Left, if the movie weren't so wildly and encyclopedically entertaining - a sendup and evocation of spy movies, with some great martial-arts moves. Start to finish, it packs plenty more punch than one of Kim Jong-il's sputtering Scuds...
...Wizard of Oz, for example, or the spot-on impressions of Jodie Foster and Ren?e Zellweger announcing the nominees in Marty's Oscar category (he loses, but makes a soused acceptance speech anyway). Some of the Broadway parodies - a Tommy Tune on stilts, a Godspell-Jesus Christ Superstar sendup - are more familiar, but sharp and funny nevertheless...
...CHRISTOPHER'S METTLE: Kirkus is convulsed by "No Way to Treat a First Lady" by Christopher Buckley (Random House; October 15), giving it a glowing starred review. "Wicked humorist Buckley shoots fish in a barrel and makes them dance. The targets in this sendup of Washington - trial lawyers, first families, Court TV, MSNBC, Dan Rather, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the America appetite for the awful - are the last decade's scandals, which, rather than being gluey and unbearable in the reheating, are even more fun this time around....Unspeakably and endlessly funny. Unless you're a former president...
...Tricky. And there was also prankster auteur Spike Jonze, the man behind Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet" (a video that explodes into a technicolor musical), the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" (a take-off on '70s TV cop shows), and Weezer's "Buddy Holly" (a good-natured "Happy Days" sendup). Jonze also showed that videos could indeed lead to the big screen: After helming some MTV clips, he went on to direct the Oscar-nominated film "Being John Malkovich...
...writer whose greatest epiphany comes when he stops denying the close relationship between his life and literature. Allen, who for 30 years has firmly denied any element of autobiography existing in his work, seems to be making some confessional statement with the film. Manifestly autobiographical segments, including an amusing sendup of Mia Farrow's allegations of Allen's misconduct with their child, support this interpretation. But Allen complicates things by introducing drastic contradictory elements--his character's interest in fetishist prostitutes, drug and alcohol addiction, and painfully inarticulate vulgarity seem intended to confound the audience. According to this analysis...