Lane—Prince Anthony

Noted: Anthony Lane on reviewing

October 31, 2011 | No Comments

The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane, on the perils of reviewing: On a broiling day, I ran to a screening of Contact, the Jodie Foster flick about messages from another galaxy. I made it for the opening credits, and, panting heavily—which, with all due respect, is not something that I find myself doing that often in Jodie Foster films—I started taking notes. These went “v. gloomy,” “odd noir look for sci-fi,” “creepy shadows in outdoor scene,” and so on. Only after three-quarters of an hour did …

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Dinty’s Google Maps essay

January 19, 2010 | No Comments

Not especially funny or witty myself, perhaps that’s why I admire those who are: I must have opened my blog a half dozen times today to read a first sentence by Anthony Lane in the New Yorker. Then tonight I read it—again—to my wife and laughed, again. It’s one of the wittiest sentences I’ve ever read. Lane’s  follow-up quip is pure gravy. “It got a rise out of Dinty, too,” I told Kathy. “He left a comment today on that …

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Noted: Anthony Lane on Grace Kelly

January 18, 2010 | 6 Comments

The sex life of Grace Kelly, like the home life of the Incas, is one of those distant but down-to-earth matters which we can investigate in depth, and muse upon at length, but never really hope to understand. According to some observers, she herself may not have grasped its implications; in the words of a columnist at Photoplay, “I wonder if Grace Kelly knew she had so much S.A.” To which the only proper response is, W.T.F.? The quote is …

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Noted: Narrative without backstory

May 15, 2009 | No Comments

From Anthony Lane’s review of Star Trek in the May 18 New Yorker:

In all narratives, there is a beauty to the merely given, as the narrator does us the honor of trusting that we will take it for granted. Conversely, there is something offensive in the implication that we might resent that pact, and, like plaintive children, demand to have everything explained.

Shakespeare could have kicked off with a flashback in which the infant Hamlet is seen wailing with indecision as to which of Gertrude’s breasts he should latch onto, but would it really have helped us to grasp the dithering prince?

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