Archives for 2019

“There are two kinds of people in one’s life—people whom one keeps waiting—and the people for whom one waits.”

S.N. Behrman, Biography

“Down Cemetery Road,” a profile of Philip Larkin by John Betjeman. This program was originally telecast by the BBC in 1964 as an episode of Monitor:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“There was a mercy in the world which you might not at first recognize. If you just kept on not getting what you wanted, you would stop wanting it in any painful way. It would be all right. You would learn to like what you had.”

James Gould Cozzens, The Last Adam

From 2009:

In honor of the release of its new DVD edition of The Last Days of Disco, the folks at the Criterion Collection invited Whit Stillman to submit a top-ten list of his favorite Criterion releases. He chose Mario Monicelli’s Big Deal on Madonna Street, Marcel Camus’ Black Orpheus, Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise, François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, Perry Henzell’s The Harder They Come, Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey, Hitchcock’s Notorious, and Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal…

What would I choose from the Criterion catalogue? I like nearly all of the films on Whit’s list, but only one, The Lady Eve, would make my personal top ten….

Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Whit Stillman writes:

Thanks, Terry—missing here was my preface to the Criterion list: these were the first 10 films I came to in their catalog that I admired, not even getting to most of their catalog, not a 10 best list.

“At Wilber’s age, it was possible to believe that argument served some purpose, persuaded people, obliged those in error to turn to the truth. But soon enough you would have to wonder if an argument ever did anything beyond giving pleasure to those who already agreed with its contentions.”

James Gould Cozzens, Men and Brethren

Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, the creators of Tom and Jerry, talk about the process of creating animated cartoons on the CBC in 1961:

(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

“She was, in fact, fond of being ill, as only a person who never really is ill can be.”

James Gould Cozzens, Men and Brethren