{"id":46,"date":"2012-05-01T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2012-05-01T19:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/?p=46"},"modified":"2021-06-04T17:20:11","modified_gmt":"2021-06-05T00:20:11","slug":"anthony-lane-funniest-writer-at-the-new-yoker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/anthony-lane-funniest-writer-at-the-new-yoker\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Lane, funniest writer at The New Yorker (more!)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Irrepressibly droll.<\/p>\n<p>On 20-kilometer walk competitors <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2008\/09\/01\/080901fa_fact_lane?printable=true\">at the Beijing Olympics<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>They will continue to propel themselves, year in, year out, as if learning to moonwalk too soon after a hip replacement.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>On Yoda\u00a0 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/archive\/2005\/05\/23\/050523crci_cinema?printable=true\">Space Case, <em>\u201cStar Wars: Episode III\u201d<\/em><\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Also, while we\u2019re here, what\u2019s with the screwy syntax? Deepest mind in the galaxy, apparently, and you still express yourself like a day-tripper with a dog-eared phrase book. \u201cI hope right you are.\u201d Break me a f***ing give.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>An aside from\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/arts\/critics\/cinema\/2009\/04\/20\/090420crci_cinema_lane?printable=true\">a surprisingly enthusiastic review<\/a> of <em>\u201cAnvil! The Story of Anvil\u201d<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Specialists might prefer to file them [Anvil] under thrash metal, that delicate subset of the genre, but \u201cAnvil!\u201d is wise enough to steer clear of such hairsplitting, not least because, in a world where most of the guitarists look like exploded spaniels, there is an awful lot of hair to split.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>It was a stroke of genius to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2010\/06\/28\/100628fa_fact_lane\">send him to the Eurovision Song Contest<\/a>, and he *kills*. Even if you can&#8217;t sing &#8220;Dinge Dong&#8221; and &#8220;Waterloo&#8221;, and never saw Bucks Fizz rip their skirts off, it&#8217;s hilarious:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>She [Celine Dion early in her career] looked like a naval officer trying to mate with a lampshade.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>He rejects amped-up, choppily-edited incoherent movies and (correctly) rails against the increasing pornography of violence that movies wrap in comic book form. But he&#8217;s no Andy Rooney. From a review of <em>\u201c<\/em><em>Red<\/em><em>\u201d<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Why should our mature, more thoughtful citizens be expected to watch loud films full of muscular men in their twenties shooting each other and blowing stuff up? What manner of challenging drama would the middle-aged prefer? And the answer is :loud films full of muscular men in their <strong>fifties<\/strong> shooting each other and blowing stuff up.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a title=\"New Yorker review\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/arts\/critics\/cinema\/2011\/04\/18\/110418crci_cinema_lane?currentPage=all\">Describing<\/a> how Robert Redford and his director of photography light scenes in <em>\u201c<\/em><em>The Conspirator<\/em><em>\u201d<\/em>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>I was hoping that Redford had exhausted his love of soft gilding in \u201cA River Runs Through It\u201d (1992), better known as \u201cThe Vaseline Rubs on It,\u201d but the new film bathes in the stuff.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In a sweet but not cloying <a title=\"abstract of New Yorker article &quot;The Fun Factory, Life at Pixar&quot;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2011\/05\/16\/110516fa_fact_lane\">piece<\/a> about life at Pixar:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>[Chief creative officer John] Lasseter became a skipper on the Jungle Cruise, at Disneyland, still one of the best preparations for a life in the movie business, where the crocodiles wear suits.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p data-ft=\"{&quot;type&quot;:1,&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}\">Madonna&#8217;s <a title=\"New Yorker review of &quot;W.E.&quot;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2012\/02\/06\/material-girls\"><em>\u201cW.E.\u201d<\/em><\/a> get another zinger:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p data-ft=\"{&quot;type&quot;:1,&quot;tn&quot;:&quot;K&quot;}\">like all royal sagas, including \u201cThe King\u2019s Speech,\u201d this film is determined to present the British princes as handsome devils, whereas, in reality, they were bred to look like basset hounds with indigestion.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">More<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The convoluted spy thriller <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/magazine\/2018\/03\/12\/red-sparrow-and-foxtrot\">&#8220;Red Sparrow&#8221;<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>&#8230; C.I.A. agent, Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton), who is handling a Russian mole. Nate\u2019s bosses, however, alert to Dominika\u2019s game, order him to entrap her, so that she can be coaxed into spying for the Americans. The plot burrows this way and that, and the mole-work grows so frantic that the movie starts running out of lawn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Irrepressibly droll. On 20-kilometer walk competitors at the Beijing Olympics: They will continue to propel themselves, year in, year out, as if learning to moonwalk too soon after a hip replacement. On Yoda\u00a0 (Space Case, \u201cStar Wars: Episode III\u201d): Also, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/anthony-lane-funniest-writer-at-the-new-yoker\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1208,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46\/revisions\/1208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skierpage.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}