Friday, June 3, 2016
“Back of the Mike,” a promotional film about sound effects on radio produced by the Jam Handy Organization for Chevrolet in 1938: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos t…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“If you attack stupidity, you attack an entrenched interest with friends in government and every walk of public life, and you will make small progress against it.” Robertson Davies, The …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, June 2, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I hold forth on the subject of books about art that are both thorough and opinionated. Here’s an excerpt. * * * Some books take a li…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“Art lies in understanding some part of the dark forces and bringing them under the direction of reason.” Robertson Davies, A Voice from the Attic
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, June 1, 2016
In a popular culture, fame is cheap. That’s what Andy Warhol meant when he said that in the future, everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes. (Remember JenniCam?) It’s also what I h…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMJunior Brown sings and plays “Highway Patrol” in an undated TV clip: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Men of action, I notice, are rarely humble, even in situations where action of any kind is a great mistake, and masterly inaction is called for.” Robertson Davies, The Table Talk of Sam…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, May 31, 2016
From 2006: Every film shot on location, whether in whole or in part, is a home movie in which bits and pieces of history are embedded, and I find myself growing increasingly fascinated by th…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, May 30, 2016
“I saw a woman in Central Park today wearing a T-shirt that said ‘America Was Never Great,’” a friend of mine tweeted over the weekend. I wasn’t surprised to hear it. My country co…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMAndrew Davis leads the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in the prelude and “Angel’s Farewell” from Sir Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. The vocal soloist is Catherine Wyn-Roge…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“All the time you spend tryin to get back what’s been took from you there’s more goin out the door. After a while you just try and get a tourniquet on it.” Cormac McCarthy, No Countr…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, May 27, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I report on the premiere of Chicago Shakespeare’s Tug of War: Foreign Fire. Here’s an excerpt. * * * It’s become common—even fashionable…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrank Sinatra and Antonio Carlos Jobim sing a bossa nova medley on Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music + Ella + Jobim. This program was originally telecast by NBC on November 13, 1967: (This …
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“What I do with my life is of my own doing. I live it the best way I can.” Frank Sinatra, interviewed by Walter Cronkite in 1965
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, May 26, 2016
“In all great works of fiction, regardless of the grim reality they present, there is an affirmation of life against the transience of that life, an essential defiance. This affirmation li…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, May 25, 2016
I just finished One-Man Band, the third volume of Simon Callow’s Orson Welles biography. It’s the first new book I’ve read from cover to cover since I got back from directing Satchmo a…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMCandid Camera pays a visit to Moscow at the height of the Cold War. This episode was originally telecast on CBS in October of 1961. To read about how it was made, go here. The hosts are Alle…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Some of the worst tyrannies of our day genuinely are ‘vowed’ to the service of mankind, yet can function only by pitting neighbor against neighbor. The all-seeing eye of a totalitaria…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMTuesday, May 24, 2016
An expatriate friend whom I haven’t seen for years recently sent me a present, a pair of tiny crystal flamingos that she intended as symbols of my marriage to Mrs. T. I was amazed—the tw…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMFrom 2006: With a few exceptions, medieval and early Renaissance art and music don’t speak to me. The gap of sensibility is too wide for me to cross. I have a feeling that silent film–no…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education.” Will Rogers, The Autobiography of Will Rogers
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMMonday, May 23, 2016
This is something I wrote a quarter-century ago in a memoir of my childhood and youth: Memory is the key to a small town. A stranger driving through my home town would see nothing but school…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 05:13PMJohn Raitt sings “Soliloquy,” from Carousel, on General Foods 25th Anniversary Show: A Salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein, originally telecast on March 28, 1954, by ABC, CBS, NBC, and DuM…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“The sole means of ridding man of crime is to rid him of freedom.” Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (trans. Natasha Randall)
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMFriday, May 20, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal I review the Brooklyn transfer of David Hare’s The Judas Kiss, starring Rupert Everett as Oscar Wilde. Here’s an excerpt. * * * David Hare would seem a n…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AMSkip James performs “Devil Got My Woman” at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and F…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM“Unfortunately for the modern dramatist, during the past century and a half the public realm has been less and less of a realm where human deeds are done, and more and more of a realm of m…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMThursday, May 19, 2016
In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I sift through The Blue Touch Paper, David Hare’s recently published memoir, for clues to his distinctive approach to political thea…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:30AM“Real artists are not nice people; all their best feelings go into their work, and life has the residue.” W.H. Auden, letter to his brother (1927, quoted in Richard Davenport-Hines, Sex,…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:00AMWednesday, May 18, 2016
The original Benny Goodman Quartet plays “Avalon” on Timex All-Star Swing Festival, taped at Lincoln Center and originally telecast by NBC in 1972. Goodman plays clarinet, Lionel Hampton…
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 07:15AM 
