Ray Pride

Pile a range of writers who write about film in a room and it's sure to turn to a hen party, a gabble of stories about editors wronging and other writers who write in weak ways or God forbid! with self-proud flourish. So yeah, lesser-light word wranglers have envied the easy luster of New Yorker critic Anthony Lane's prose since 1993. "Nobody's Perfect," the 752-page doorstop of a decade's prose from the fortyish, Cambridge-educated writer is a bipolar contraption, the first half gathering his name-makingly clever-yet-dispensable pirouettes around eminently disdainable pictures like "Speed 2: Cruise Control," followed by longer appreciations. It's these latter essays that sparkle with cosmopolitan wit, yet without resorting to the Teflon scorn of his movie pummelings. He's particularly piquant on Nabokov, W.G. Sebald, Bresson, Sturges, Keaton and Tati. I especially treasure his sweet portrait of photographer William Klein.

Anthony Lane will discuss "Nobody's Perfect: Writings from the New Yorker" September 18 at 7:30pm, at Barbara's, 1350 North Wells, (312) 642-5044.

(2002-09-11)

Also by Ray Pride

Tip of the Week
Vérité, I say unto you. Bryan Kortis and Steven Mudrick's "WTC Uncut," an important historical document, is an unblinking video image of the World Trade Center that runs from moments after the second strike and ends soon after the second collapse.
(2002-09-04)

Sex education
Benoît Jacquot packs his serene work with the game of attraction, the tangible qualities of seduction, the sheen of bared skin, the gift of sight. Yet the modesty of "Sade," his latest film, worked against him, as did the existence of a larger-budgeted, more literal-minded film with the Marquis at its center, Philip Kaufman's "Quills."
(2002-08-28)

Tip of the Week
Claude Chabrol at his most elegant and sinister, examining the perversity of evil in pearlescent Swiss surroundings.
(2002-08-21)

Hit or myth
"Simone" is about the ideal of perfection. While writer-director Andrew Niccol's second feature is about female beauty and how our celebrity culture fashions it, it's also about Al Pacino's line readings. Now there's perfection.
(2002-08-21)

Reverse zoom
(2002-08-21)

Tip of the Week
(2002-08-14)

Victorian Secret
(2002-08-14)

EVERYMAN OF ACTION
(2002-08-07)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-08-07)

OFF CAMERA
(2002-08-07)

TIP OF THE WEEK
(2002-08-01)

CANDID CAMERA
(2002-08-01)

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