Word: surreal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...times are surreal enough now; we can appreciate Fellini as a prophet and documentarian of every cultural excess of the late 20th century. There's no question that Fellini was in part satirizing his milieu. But because he was incapable of a stillborn frame of film, his pictures celebrate what they criticize; they amount to a cautionary blueprint for survival in the atomic age. If you've been very lucky or very naughty, then life for you is like a Fellini movie...
...raging over 150 miles, from L.A.'s northern exurbs to the Mexican border, there was no typical experience. Fires threatened the bedroom communities of Simi Valley and Chatsworth; they reached deep into Altadena, only eight miles from central L.A., and scorched the northern San Diego countryside. But their most surreal and spectacular foray was into Laguna Beach. A pristine, smog-free enclave bordered by cliffs and water, the 24,800- resident paradise for surfers, artists and environmentalists, is, along with the adjacent community of Emerald Bay, home to some of the richer people on the Pacific Rim. It was here...
...Burton's movies are continually faulted for being visual feasts without plots. More like cartoons than live-action films, they are heavy on surreal style and light on story development. Luckily, his leads are generally more cartoonish than real anyway: Pee Wee Herman, Beetlejuice and Batman. But as "Batman Returns" hinted, even these films are too limiting for Burton. With "The Nightmare Before Christmas," Burton may have found the ideal vehicle for his sensibilities: an actual animated feature totally free from the constraints of actors...
...Americans have ventured into Somalia in a sort of surreal confusion, first impersonating Mother Teresa and now John Wayne. It would help to clarify that self-image, for to do so would clarify the mission, and then to recast the rhetoric of the enterprise...
...flowing lava, deserts and snow drifts suggest a wasteland, presumably Siberia, that, accompanied by haunting music, add to the sense of the impending doom of the love affair. The bizarre sequences involving a flying man form a stark contrast to the jovial musical scenes and make the film a surreal montage rather than a generic documentary...