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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for June 1, 2004

TT: Off to the races

June 1, 2004 by Terry Teachout

In case you didn’t drop by yesterday, I’m back from the dead, and I blogged a lot. Take a look!


If you already did, I don’t think I’ll have much time to blog today. I have a piece-and-a-half to write, and I’m only hitting on about five-and-a-quarter cylinders. As soon as I have some spare time, though, I’ll be right back at you.


Yesterday’s only consumable, by the way, was the Criterion Collection DVD of Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck (mmm), Henry Fonda, and a whole bunch of terrific supporting players. I think it’s probably the best of Sturges’ films, though not my personal favorite (that would be Sullivan’s Travels). At any rate, I watched it in ten-minute chunks in between working on yesterday’s piece, and loved every second of it.


Later.

TT: Almanac

June 1, 2004 by Terry Teachout

“I know that there are many people–and very intelligent people, too–who love this kind of fast-action movie, who say that this is what movies do best and that this is what they really want when they go to a movie. Probably many of them would agree with everything I’ve said but will still love the movie. Well, it’s not what I want, and the fact that Friedkin has done a sensational job of direction just makes that clearer. It’s not what I want not because it fails (it doesn’t fail) but because of what it is. It is, I think, what we once feared mass entertainment might become: jolts for jocks. There’s nothing in the movie that you enjoy thinking over afterward–nothing especially clever except the timing of the subway-door-and-umbrella sequence. Every other effect in the movie–even the climactic car-versus-runaway-elevated-train chase–is achieved by noise, speed, and brutality.”


Pauline Kael, “Urban Gothic” (a review of The French Connection), 1971

TT: Prose unlimited

June 1, 2004 by Terry Teachout

I wish to announce that I wrote and delivered Pieces Nos. 2 and 3 today! One more and I’m out of the barrel.


I plan to celebrate by (1) doing no more work until tomorrow and (2) listening to a brand-new Fats Waller anthology about whose merits I’ll report to you in due course…but not tonight.


Did somebody say Now turn that iBook off, pal? No? Well, why not?

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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