As I've mentioned before, Anthony Lane, the British film critic for
The New Yorker, apparently has a master list of 10 topics, at least one of which he must reference in just about everything he writes. That list, you will recall, includes: Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolkien, 007, royalty, Harry Potter, Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, Sherlock Holmes and something European (but not British). Lane's review of
The Amazing Spider-Man references three of these: Shakespeare (in the first paragraph!), royalty (the fictional Queen Narissa, played by Susan Sarandon in
Enchanted) and something European (Faust). He also references fellow-Brit Roald Dahl, as he did in his recent review of
Moonrise Kingdom. A couple more nods to Dahl and I might have to add him to the master list.
