- published: 04 Nov 2015
- views: 741914
A comedy is entertainment consisting of jokes and satire, intended to make an audience laugh. For ancient Greeks and Romans a comedy was a stage-play with a happy ending. In the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings and a lighter tone. In this sense Dante used the term in the title of his poem, La Divina Commedia.
The phenomena connected with laughter and that which provokes it has been carefully investigated by psychologists and agreed upon the predominating characteristics are incongruity or contrast in the object, and shock or emotional seizure on the part of the subject. It has also been held that the feeling of superiority is an essential factor: thus Thomas Hobbes speaks of laughter as a "sudden glory." Modern investigators have paid much attention to the origin both of laughter and of smiling, as well as the development of the "play instinct" and its emotional expression.
Much comedy contains variations on the elements of surprise, incongruity, conflict, repetitiveness, and the effect of opposite expectations, but there are many recognized genres of comedy. Satire and political satire use ironic comedy used to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of humor.
Sharon Yvonne Stone (born March 10, 1958) is an American actress, film producer, and former fashion model.
Stone first came to attention for her role opposite Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1990 sci-fi thriller Total Recall before achieving international recognition with her starring role in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct (1992) by Paul Verhoeven. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama for her performance as Ginger McKenna in the crime drama film Casino (1995), directed by Martin Scorsese. She received further acclaim and Golden Globe Award nominations for her roles in the 1998 drama The Mighty and the 1999 comedy The Muse. In 2004, Stone won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Drama Series for her performance in The Practice. She has also appeared in such movies as the crime drama Alpha Dog (2006), the drama Bobby (2006) and, most recently, a biographical drama film about a porn actress, Lovelace (2013).
William "Billy" Connolly, CBE (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname "The Big Yin" ("The Big One"). His first trade, in the early 1960s, was as a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer in The Humblebums alongside friend Gerry Rafferty until 1971 and subsequently as a soloist. In the early 1970s, he made the transition from folk-singer with a comedic persona to fully-fledged comedian. Best known to many as a stand up comedian, he appears in several lists of the greatest comedians ever.
Connolly is also an actor and has appeared in such films as Water (1985); Indecent Proposal (1993); Pocahontas (1995); Muppet Treasure Island (1996); Mrs. Brown (1997); The Boondock Saints (1999); The Man Who Sued God (2001); The Last Samurai (2003); Timeline (2003); Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004); Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties (2006); Open Season (2006); The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008); Open Season 2 (2008); Brave (2012); Quartet (2012) and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). Connolly reprised his role as Noah "Il Duce" MacManus in The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day (2009).