Word: viewers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...toit (The horseman on the roof)" ultimately doesn't succeed as either. Attempting to put new a "psychological" spin on old themes, yet still clinging to elements of an oddly oldfashioned romanticism, it may leave you wondering what you're supposed to feel. As a result, it left this viewer feeling very little...
...other major theme of the movie, that of the deadly epidemic, is hammered home with graphic zeal that stirs more repulsion than pity. At regular intervals, some random victim will appear and proceed to die horribly in spite of all Angelo's heroic efforts, suspending the viewer in a permanent state of ghoulish expectation. Those not killed by the cholera are reduced to panic-stricken animals, ready to turn on anyone suspected of spreading the dread disease. Oddly enough, this aspect of human nature is portrayed in a purely comic manner, highlighted by a brief but very funny cameo appearance...
...which the Kienholzes (he and Nancy Reddin were co-authors of all the work from 1972 on) constructed an art-gallery space and filled it with cast figures whose faces were air-conditioning grilles. From these would spout taped readings of art-magazine gobbledygook when you, the viewer, pressed a floor switch...
This show will take things much further, for specialists, no doubt, but especially for the ordinary viewer. There could be no more vivid introduction to the upper reaches of Chinese art, and this takes hold right at the beginning. No matter how many ritual vessels from the late Shang dynasty (13th to 11th centuries B.C.) you may have seen, the memory of them will pale beside the massive ting, or tripod pot, in the first room, with its swollen bronze belly and deeply incised decoration. And when, in a nearby case, you see a late neolithic pi, or jade disk...
...typical MST3K show has perhaps 700 of these asides. There are fewer in this riff on This Island Earth--the whole thing, ruthlessly pared down, lasts only 73 minutes--but watching it in a crowd offers a different high. As the gags pile up remorselessly, and the viewer strains to keep up with the story line and the cutting subtext, a furious but benign apnea takes hold. You can't enjoy a good long laugh because you'll miss too much; you must let it explode in short blasts. It's the happiest form of internal injury...