Poster Placement

Adaptation
Just saw The Amazing Spider-Man and I was struck by the prominent poster of Hitchcock's Rear Window in Peter Parker's bedroom. I don't see much of a connection between the two films, except that Peter is a photographer and so is the hero (played by James Stewart) of Rear Window. There's no comparison in quality, BTW. The Amazing Spider-Man is OK but hardly, well, amazing, while Hitchcock's film, of course, is great.

Lanewatch

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.