That piano propels and punctuates the stories Mr. Ross spins in a dry, perfectly enunciated speech-song, illustrated here and there with a raised eyebrow and a knowing smile.
IT always seems to be raining in London in THE END OF THE AFFAIR (1999), Neil Jordan's intoxicating film version of Graham Greene's novel, but Ralph Fiennes and Julianne Moore managed to stay dry, perfectly pressed and immaculately gorgeous.
From his first feature, "Barking Dogs Never Bite," in 2000, he has done justice to the storytelling demands of a variety of genres — the paranoid thriller, the police procedural, the scary-monster movie — while wrapping them in his bone-dry, perfectly calibrated wit.
The manufacturing process of smoked fish is complex, because the main ingredient, which is fish that have been cleaned, should be smoked with a small fire, so that the fish take a few days to dry perfectly.
The grits are then washed, partly cooked and dried, leaving them utterly tasteless but perfectly white, uniform and easy to cook.
Next morning, breakfast featured perfectly flat, dried fish.
Lip gloss is recommended, as it gives a more shiny and fluid look, but lipstick will work perfectly as dried blood.
A drying rack is perfectly sufficient.
On a recent evening, hijiki, a black seaweed, was nutty and tender, and ohitashi, spinach steeped in dashi broth topped with flakes of bonito — dried, fermented skipjack tuna — came perfectly blanched.
But Mr. Edelman is fine company as the genial Curtis, as is the appealingly dry Carolyn McCormick, perfectly cast as Curtis's forbearing wife, Mimi.
