Purvey, Purveyor & Purveyance

purveyor







Y

【英】【史】王室征發官



D



–noun 

1. a person who purveys, provides, or supplies: a purveyor of [foods]; a purveyor of lies. 

2. Old English Law. an officer who provided or acquired provisions for the sovereign under the prerogative of purveyance.



Origin:

1250–1300; ME pourveour < AF; see purvey, -or 



purvey

–verb (used with object) 

to provide, furnish, or supply (esp. food or provisions) usually as a business or service. 





　

The world of bookish, passive-aggressive reporters doesn't seem like the stuff of compelling drama, but Billy Ray's Shattered Glass manages to make one egghead's pathetic desperation a rousing time at the movies. 



Comparisons to The Paper Chase or even All the President's Men aren't that far out of line: Glass presents a sad, late-'90s alternate universe to Woodward and Bernstein, where journalists -- ostensible purveyors of truth -- have to scramble to ferret out the lies in their own offices. 



Unlike Steven Spielberg's jocular Catch Me If You Can, Shattered Glass doesn't offer a pat explanation for its anti-hero's pathological lying. He isn't abandoned by a parent, and it isn't implied by anyone other than Hayden Christensen's Stephen Glass that he's attempting to live up to stratospheric expectations "back home." 



pat

–adjective 

1. exactly to the point or purpose; apt; opportune: a pat solution to a problem. 

2. excessively glib; unconvincingly facile: His answers were [too] pat to suit the examining board. 

3. learned, known, or mastered perfectly or exactly: to have something pat.  



stratospheric

同溫層的,平流層的



Instead, the character's rationale is inherent in Christensen's cagey, live-wire performance: He's a composite of every dog-ate-my-homework brown-noser that ever walked into a newsroom, classroom, or job interview, desperate for approbation and willing to stroke any ego to get it. 



brown-nose 

–verb (used without object) 

1. to curry favor; behave obsequiously.



A-list screenwriter Ray takes some liberties of his own in the name of cinema -- conflating a character here and there, and focusing almost solely on the piece that brought Glass down -- but the result is a tightly crafted, swiftly edited exposé that never [curries] obvious audience sympathy. 





swig

whose breakfast consists of pancakes chased down with syrup swigged straight from the bottle. 

gulp

That is a solid gain after "Anne," with Genevieve Bujold's [gulping] and Richard Burton's [hemming] and [hawing].

devour

As Evelyn's agenda folds into LaBute's, The Shape of Things suggests a more personal issue—a [self]-devouring contempt for theater itself.

imbibe

He imbibed great quantities of iced [tea]. 

Plenty of audience members are sure to shut down before they can [imbibe] a single footnote of the story's subtext

regimen

Actually, Evelyn does make a few helpful [sartorial] suggestions, encourage a weight-loss regimen,



tidbit 

a delicate morsel of food

garbanzo

and not any adolescent, but the kind of teenage boy who goes to martial arts movies and fantasizes about guns and girls with great big [garbanzos].

cruller

Would you mind leaving me the cruller? It's the only doughnut I got.

pimento

That's right. Now if you excuse me, you got some pimento loaf in there. 

calzone

Well, as a vegetarian... as a spinach-and-mushroom calzone can be.

Culinary