A critic and a dramatist

MUST-READS

Nobody's Perfect
Anthony Lane
Vintage Books
Rs 450

The irrepressible Lane, one of the most admired "" and despised "" film critics in the world, has been enlivening the pages of the New Yorker since 1993 when he crossed the Atlantic "because I no longer felt the slightest compunction to bang the drum for British cinema, an activity only slightly more useful than arguing the case for a fleet of Swiss submarines".

It's easy to see why Lane provokes such a wide range of responses. He's a brilliantly caustic writer with an unparalleled knack for tearing a film to pieces. "This movie is so insistently heartwarming that it chilled me to the marrow," he writes of Forrest Gump.

Of a character with an appetite for homicide, he says, "His endearing bozo features suggest he could kill a couple of cold beers, if he was feeling especially mean."

The flip side is, it's often hard to to take him seriously as a film critic, for he lacks the primary quality for that job: an unconditional open-mindedness about movies (he freely admits to being prejudiced against some genres).

Even so, the occasional meanness of Lane's writing mustn't be taken at face value "" it's usually done in a hearty spirit and with a self-awareness that's missing in many other reviewers. Best of all, he's always good for a laugh.

Opening Scene: Early Memoirs of a Dramatis, and a Play
Adya Rangacharya (translated by Shashi Deshpande)
Penguin Books India
Rs 200

Adya Rangacharya "" or Shriranga, as he came to be known "" was a giant of Kannada literature.

The child of an orthodox Brahmin jagirdar family, he went from watching village aatas put up by farm labourers to critically observing full-fledged natakas in the cities, taking in the theatre scene in London to finally writing (and often performing in) more than a hundred plays. There was no genre of writing he did not touch.

A creative writer and a critic, he also penned a vast body of scholarly treatises on subjects that ranged from drama to philosophy and philology. His English translation of the Natyashashtra remains the definitive source of reference for most students of theatre.

But as his memoirs reveal, his first and most abiding love was drama. His 50 years of association with the theatre were full of achievements, one of which was to bring women on to the amateur stage. Generations of actors have Shriranga to thank for investing their profession with a dignity it had lacked.

Shriranga's memoirs record his life without pomp or sentiment. His daughter Shashi Deshpande's translation and her introduction to her father's life in theatre should bring him under the spotlight for a whole new audience.