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April 22, 2004
TT: Consumables
I have all of Thursday off, glory be, so I'll endeavor to do some juicy blogging later in the day. Meanwhile, here's what I consumed on Wednesday:- I saw a press preview of the Royal National Theatre's revival of Tom Stoppard's Jumpers, which opens in New York on April 25. I'll be reviewing it in next Friday's Wall Street Journal.
- In addition, I looked at extended chunks of a couple of old movies after returning home from the police station and washing my hands (how's that for a teaser?). One was My Darling Clementine, John Ford's version of what happened at the O.K. Corral, the only one of his major Westerns I hadn't seen. Factual it isn't (the only Wyatt Earp film that remotely approximates the truth about the Earp family is Tombstone), but it has a quietly elegiac quality that I found impossible to resist. Not only is each black-and-white scene composed with a painter's eye, but Henry Fonda's performance as Wyatt Earp is remarkably moving--Tom Joad without the corn--and Victor "Beefcake" Mature is unexpectedly good as Doc Holliday.
I also watched part of a new restoration of Sam Wood's 1940 film of Thornton Wilder's Our Town, which includes several members of the original Broadway cast (including Frank Craven as the Stage Manager), plus a score by Aaron Copland that's comparable in quality to Appalachian Spring. If you've never seen it, do, though I suggest you record it off Turner Classic Movies rather than buying any of the currently available DVD versions, all of which appear to be from crappy-looking prints.
- Now playing on iTunes: Pierre Bernac's 78 recording of Francis Poulenc's C., with Poulenc at the piano (hopelessly out of print, I fear). I'm in that kind of mood--what my Brazilian friends call saudade. Maybe it'll lift after a good night's sleep.
Posted April 22, 2004 12:19 PM
