Word: realism
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...series. For years, "Speedy Alka-Seltzer," the cartoon imp with a tablet for a hat, insulted audiences by pushing the fizz as though he were conducting a Romper Room class. Then the Jack Tinker agency took over the account and decided to try for a touch of wit and realism: a film showing nothing more than a quick succession of people's midriffs being prodded and pushed, or just merrily jouncing along. The message was: "No matter what shape your stomach's in, when it gets out of shape, take Alka-Seltzer." Along Madison Avenue, the film became an instant...
There is no mistaking Bulgakov's target in The Heart of a Dog: it is the boorish, overweening, ignorant, slogan-stuffed Soviet proletarian. Bulgakov wrote this short, scornful novel in 1925, drawing on his inexhaustible supply of contempt. Its method is the "fantastic realism" he was to use later in The Master and Margarita. Matter-of-fact becomes matter-of-fantasy; madly grotesque events are described in the language of naturalism...
...brand names are shown on TV sets, dropped on tables, and exhibited shamelessly throughout. The exteriors are bleached-out process shots taken on different days with no attempt made to reconcile light changes. When a little action is necessary, Polanski drags out the hand-held camera for some shaky realism (catch Hitchcock filming violence with a hand-held camera!); and repeatedly, Polanski substitutes tight close-ups for style. If nothing else, Rosemary's Baby is ugly--aesthetically derelict, the groping of a bombed-out mind...
Rats in the Basement. No amount of empathy from outside can give a singer the realism and believability that constitute soul. He has to have "been down the line," as Negroes say, and "paid his dues" in life. Aretha, in spite of her youth, has paid heavily. "I might be just 26, but I'm an old woman in disguise?26 goin' on 65," she says only half jokingly. "Trying to grow up is hurting, you know. You make mistakes. You try to learn from them, and when you don't it hurts even more. And I've been hurt?...
...Guignol quality. People don't just fall down and lie there with a stain on the uniform and maybe a twitch or two. They writhe and roll, gurgling and spouting the red stuff in enough quantities to make even a paratrooper throw up-which John does with emetic realism. There is also a double helping of portentous stream of consciousness on the sound track, plus some heavy-handed message mongering that is both otiose and silly. "Just you and me," observes one of the characters, lying near death in an inferno of exploding mortars and chattering machine guns. "Skill...