The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
In the New Yorker...
Jeff Wrangler:
I am still struggling to get through the April 3 "Health, Medicine & the Body" issue.
The whole damn issue is a "duty." :(
I'm about to give up on it.
Jeff Wrangler:
I did give up on the "Health, Medicine & Body" issue. :-\
But then this evening I came across the funniest thing I've read in a while. In the April 24 issue, Anthony Lane reviews A Quiet Passion, the new film about Emily Dickinson. There's nothing funny about that, but then in the same article he goes on to review the car-chase-and-crash movie The Fate of the Furious, and he does his review of that movie in a poem imitating Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death." :laugh:
serious crayons:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on April 25, 2017, 08:14:55 pm ---But then this evening I came across the funniest thing I've read in a while. In the April 24 issue, Anthony Lane reviews A Quiet Passion, the new film about Emily Dickinson. There's nothing funny about that, but then in the same article he goes on to review the car-chase-and-crash movie The Fate of the Furious, and he does his review that a poem imitating Emily Dickinson's "Because I Could Not Stop for Death." :laugh:
--- End quote ---
Oh, I'll have to look that up. There was a while there when I wouldn't miss a review by Anthony Lane, even of a movie I'd never want, or get a chance, to see. He's so clever. Lately I've begun thinking of him as a bit too clever at times -- writing things just for the sake of making jokes as opposed to things that are integral to the review.
But that sounds like a really appropriate opportunity for cleverness! And he can be brilliant at it.
I remember a line of his -- I can't remember what star he was talking about, but let's say it was Tom Cruise. "I'll admit, the walls of my bedroom are not shrouded with posters of Tom Cruise, but ..." he said, meaning he wasn't normally the hugest fan but in this movie Cruise was pretty good. That joke fit organically into the review. But sometimes they seem like too much of a stretch.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on April 26, 2017, 09:44:43 am ---Oh, I'll have to look that up. There was a while there when I wouldn't miss a review by Anthony Lane, even of a movie I'd never want, or get a chance, to see. He's so clever. Lately I've begun thinking of him as a bit too clever at times -- writing things just for the sake of making jokes as opposed to things that are integral to the review.
But that sounds like a really appropriate opportunity for cleverness! And he can be brilliant at it.
I remember a line of his -- I can't remember what star he was talking about, but let's say it was Tom Cruise. "I'll admit, the walls of my bedroom are not shrouded with posters of Tom Cruise, but ..." he said, meaning he wasn't normally the hugest fan but in this movie Cruise was pretty good. That joke fit organically into the review. But sometimes they seem like too much of a stretch.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I agree. Sometimes he does seem too clever by half. But the faux Dickinson poem is brilliant, even if he does use a word or two that would have given Mr. Shawn a heart attack. 8)
southendmd:
I love Anthony Lane.
Several years ago, he put out a book that was mostly a compilation of his New Yorker reviews, plus a few random essays. It's called "Nobody's Perfect", an allusion to "Some Like It Hot".
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