Word: surreal
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When a TV show advertises itself as "magical" or "surreal," be afraid. Since David Lynch's Twin Peaks, the supposedly bizarre has evolved its own cliches. These were best satirized in the 1995 movie Living in Oblivion, in which Steve Buscemi plays a director who casts a dwarf in a dream sequence, only to have the little person mock him. "The only place I've seen dwarfs in dreams is in stupid movies like this!" the tiny actor says. "Oh, make it weird, put a dwarf...
...magical, surreal new drama, Carnivale, the first thing we see is ... a dwarf. Samson (Michael J. Anderson, of Lynch's Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive), the manager of a traveling carnival plying the Dust Bowl in 1934, sets the scene: ever since God gave dominion over the world to "the crafty ape he called man," good and evil have clashed in secret, magical combat. "To each generation," he intones, "was born a creature of light and a creature of darkness." Now the goodies and baddies are preparing for a final battle. In one efficient monologue Anderson sets up the show...
...brown and pulls off the occasional novel, spooky image. But we also expect the home of Tony Soprano to give us characters with well-imagined inner lives. Brother Justin comes across as a typical whited sepulcher--if there's one thing more trite than a dwarf in a surreal drama, it's a preacher with a dark side--and Brown's campy performance largely involves shouting "Enough!" and "No-o-o-o!" with horror-flick pathos. Stahl is more modulated as Ben, but the script stagily walks him from one set piece to another to establish our sympathy: he breaks...
...This surreal failure to face reality is not confined to Kathmandu's socialites. By common consent, Nepal's politicians have been misgoverning the country since 1989: they've squabbled over who should be Prime Minister (there have been 13 in 13 years) and have failed dismally to tackle the aching poverty that gives the Maoists their popular support. The situation was aggravated by the enthronement in June 2001 of King Gyanendra who, rather than displaying some sorely needed sensitivity after much of the royal family was gunned down by a drunken, lovesick prince, has sacked two Prime Ministers and suspended...
Quimby the Mouse (Fantagraphics; 68 pages) collects a series of comics from the early 1990s in which Corrigan's style and themes were formed. The alienated title rodent shares DNA with Disney's Mickey, among others, but with surreal differences (in some strips, for instance, he has two heads, one of which sickens and dies). Recapturing the past is a theme here too: Ware writes a touching introduction about the death of his grandmother, details from which--his returning to visit her former home, for example--surface in the strips. Ware's eerie, nostalgic world is no Disneyland...