Word: wits
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...chose a not-so-bad film, This Island Earth--Universal-International's 1955 space opera about American scientists kidnapped to a distant planet, where they are attacked by macrocephalous monsters. The MST3K prologue is a bit ragged, but once This Island Earth kicks in, so does the Brains' mother wit. It finds the absurd everywhere, from the studio logo ("Doesn't the fact that it's Universal make it International?") to the ethereal, annoying ringing sound that accompanies the aliens ("Now we know what the world sounds like to Pete Townshend...
...WILL MISS COMEDIAN GEORGE BURNS for many reasons: the great wit, the perfect comic timing, the dreadful songs and the shuffling soft shoe [Appreciation, March 18]. Mostly, however, I will miss him because he made me feel young. As long as George was around, I somehow felt like a six-year-old kid sitting in front of the radio watching my family fall down laughing at Burns and Allen's routines. Now, suddenly, liver spots are popping out all over, crow's-feet are marching across my face, and my best friend is Metamucil. Oh, George! PATTI LAUNDERS Nipomo, California...
...film is crucial to its success. A film whose intentions are clear might have been doomed by didactic dialogue and heavy-handed direction. Thankfully, the message is obscured somewhat by the layers of the film. The Coens let the plot flow naturally, injecting virile doses of Minnesota wit at just the right times...
Stephen Wadsworth's direction, as well as his translation and adaptation of the text, captures its comic wit and lends the story a sense of exuberance and farce that is sustained through the opera's three acts, complementing the singers' delivery...
Chungking has enough wit and pace to keep any mall crowd entertained. But it's the cinema verve of Wong's five films to date that makes them wholly his, whether he's doing gangster films (As Tears Go By, Fallen Angels), young-rebel dramas (Days of Being Wild) or kung-fu sagas (Ashes of Time, a film so beautifully bizarre it might be the first Martian-arts movie). The elements of his visual style: nightscapes (bars, beds, jukeboxes); sulky boys in white shirts; anomie punctuated by awful violence; murky lighting, as if scenes had been shot underwater and daubed...