Word: surrealness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Each episode is rendered in a distinct style. The first is a sort of soundstage fairy tale, deliberately embellished with unreal sets and effects (like an erratic snowfall). The second is done as eccentric, even surreal comedy, the third as a bucolic elegy, full of rich fields and dappled light. The vignettes, however, share a common theme. Renoir calls it "a tribute to a virtue which unfortunately has tended to disappear these days: tolerance...
...That surreal scene, captured on film by the bank's automatic cameras, was the Symbionese Liberation Army's way of introducing Patricia Campbell Hearst, 20, to the world in their role for her as an armed terrorist. It was the latest bizarre development in what had already become one of the most sensational and baffling crime sagas in American history, engaging the speculation and imagination of the U.S., the sure stuff of books and movies to come. Last week's episode only added a sharp new edge to the fears of a particular class of Americans, the wealthy and vulnerable...
...taken the 42-year-old Lester 15 years of seesawing the highs and lows of moviemaking to reach that conclusion. Lester shot to prominence as the director of the Beatles' first film, A Hard Day's Night (1964), followed by the surreal comedy The Knack (1965). He quickly became the hottest new director around; his trick-camera, quick-cut editing had a breezy spontaneity that spoke for the swinging London of the '60s. With the artistic freedom that success can buy, Lester then turned his comedic scattergun to more serious and deeply felt purpose. Starting...
Moral Absolutes. Jumpers begins at a surreal party. A girl swings back and forth over the stage as she performs a denture-defying striptease. Some lemon-clad gymnasts, called Jumpers, do flips and build pyramids. A shot flings one Jumper out of his pyramid. It seems to be a gag until he bleeds. Next day the cadaver turns up in the bedroom of ex-Singer Dotty Moore, at whose party he was mysteriously murdered. A good deal of esprit de corpse ensues until the poor chap is lugged away by his fellow Jumpers in a huge plastic bag. The deceased...
...Surrealism in this film is no gratuitous exercise, but a way of probing into the distoritions of mind wrought in a small boy's head by an uncontrollable world of misery. Bunuel has mellowed since he made this film: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, a clever comedy he made a year and a half ago, uses the same surreal imagery, but in a less direct way. That film was popular, witty, adroit; Los Olvidados is driving, frightening--caustic and political. People who thought The Discreet Charm was amusing, but who couldn't quite see where Bunuel was going, should...