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ABOUT "ABOUT LAST NIGHT" AND ITS AUTHORS 
This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout, Laura Demanski (otherwise known as Our Girl in Chicago, or "OGIC" for short), and Carrie Frye (who signs her postings "CAAF"). Terry, who lives in New York, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the music critic of Commentary. more

ABOUT TERRY'S BOOKS 
Terry recently wrote the introductions to William Bailey on Canvas and the paperback edition of Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado. His latest book is All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, published by Harcourt. more

ABOUT TERRY'S OPERA 
Lend me your ears (and eyes)
Men at work
Men at work (II)
Men at work (III)
Men at work (IV)
For better and worse
Men at work (V)
Men (and women) at work (VI)
Notes from an unkept diary
The case for lower-case opera

SEE TERRY TALK 
To view Terry's December videoblog, go here.

Archive  4929 entries and counting

CONTACT
tteachout@artsjournal.com
ogic@artsjournal.com
caaf@artsjournal.com

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TOP FIVE

A list of new things we've liked (subject to unexpected and wildly capricious updating).

CD 
Legendary Piano Recordings: The Complete Grieg, Saint-Saëns, Pugno, and Diémer (Marston Records, two CDs). Edvard Grieg, the first composer of significance to make records, cut nine 78s of his own compositions for piano during a visit to Paris in 1903. One year later Camille Saint-Saëns made the first in a series of sixteen recordings in which he plays piano solos and accompanies a good violinist and a not-so-good mezzo-soprano. All these stupendously rare performances, plus other important piano recordings of similar vintage, have now been transferred to CD by Ward Marston in meticulously pitch-corrected versions. The sound may be primitive, but the interpretations come through with uncanny, even eerie clarity, and as you listen to Grieg rippling blithely through "Butterfly" or Saint-Saëns tossing off his "Valse nonchalante" with fey elegance, you will feel closer to the lost world of nineteenth-century pianism than you ever before thought possible (TT).

PLAY 
The Four of Us (City Center, 131 W. 55, extended through May 18). Prodigy playwright Itamar Moses' latest is a sharp-witted study of two young writers whose friendship is endangered when they succeed at different rates of speed. It has the feel of a first-rate indie flick, enhanced by the intimacy of an off-Broadway stage production. Smart, crisp, touching (TT).

DVD 
Damages (Season 1). This show has it all: Smart scripts, stylish direction, and a phenomenal cast anchored by Glenn Close. Not to mention murder, skullduggery, and noir action galore. Yet despite a fistful of Golden Globe nominations (and a Best Actress award for Close) this FX series still seems to be flying under the radar. With Season 2 not scheduled to air until January 2009, now's the perfect time to catch up. Close plays Patty Hewes, a high-profile litigator who is gunning for Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), a billionaire CEO accused of emptying his company's retirement coffers. Patty Hewes' protégé, Ellen Parsons (Rose Byrne), is the young lamb/ first-year associate who ends up on the dark side of the looking glass (CAAF).

MOVIE 
Eran Kolirin, The Band's Visit. This modest, wise, and funny movie plops down a band of Egyptian policeman-musicians in an Israeli nowhere land. Kolirin sidelines explicit political themes in favor of drawing out characters who are, to be sure, shaped by their cultures but not defined by them. Filled with subtle surprises, from the musical passion simmering quietly beneath its characters' uniforms to the deeper truths that fuel that passion (OGIC).

BOOK 
A.J. Liebling, World War II Writings (Library of America, $40). An omnibus collection of wartime dispatches to The New Yorker, plus twenty-eight previously uncollected articles and Normandy Revisited, the uncommonly elegant 1958 memoir in which Liebling wove together present- and past-tense accounts of his wartime and postwar visits to the site of D-Day. The contents may sound miscellaneous, but in fact they're magnetically readable. Except for Ernie Pyle, no American journalist did a better job of serving as a witness to war in the twentieth century, and these pieces combine lightness of touch with high seriousness to tremendously powerful effect (TT).

Out of the Past

Not new, but still worth a look or listen (and no less subject to change without notice).

FILM 
The Red Pony. Lewis Milestone's uncommonly sensitive 1949 adaptation of John Steinbeck's quartet of short stories about a fanciful boy and the ranch hand he idolizes is a "children's movie" that adults can watch with enormous pleasure. The cast, led by Robert Mitchum, Myrna Loy, and Louis Calhern, is impeccable, Tony Gaudio's Technicolor cinematography is quietly handsome, and Aaron Copland's score is one of the major achievements of his middle period. Steinbeck wrote the script himself, proving yet again that his work plays better on screen than it reads on the page (TT).

BOOK 
Sarah Caudwell, Thus Was Adonis Murdered. Before her death, in 2000, Sarah Caudwell wrote four mysteries, each one a little jewel of comedy and elegant construction. It's my fond wish that these will someday be published in a single omnibus volume. Alas, that day may be some time away; Caudwell's books have fallen out of print in the U.S., although used copies are widely available (you'll want the editions with the Edward Gorey covers). Begin with this one, which introduces Caudwell's merry cast of young London barristers and their friend (and chronicler) Professor Hilary Tamar. Read it the first time for the mystery; then re-read it again and again for a first-class entertainment (CAAF).

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