Archives for June 1, 2004

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.

“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

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?