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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

Been there, seen that

December 28, 2015 by Terry Teachout

On Sunday I took Mrs. T, who likes science fiction, to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It’s the first Star Wars film that I’ve seen since 1980. I saw the original Star Wars (which I found charming) and The Empire Strikes Back when they were new and I was young, after which I decided that twice was enough.

06_jaws_1098_2074_02907_0In case you’re wondering, The Force Awakens bored me cross-eyed, which is not the best way to watch a 3-D movie. (For the record, Mrs. T felt the same way.) As David Thomson said of Jaws, the Blockbuster That Started It All, “It is zero to the power of ten.” Yes, I like good clean fun as much as the next guy—I am, lest we forget, the drama critic who gave thumbs-up to The Wedding Singer—but I do expect somewhat more out of a film than pretty faces, continuous explosions, a recycled score, and dialogue as unmemorable as a lukewarm bowl of cafeteria soup.

To all this I need only add that the American film industry has now, it would seem, attained the perigee of decadence: it has given us, courtesy of J.J. Abrams, a totally derivative hommage to a totally derivative hommage.

Here endeth the lesson.

* * *

The climactic sword fight from The Adventures of Robin Hood, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone. The score is by Erich Wolfgang Korngold:

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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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