Because I Am Sick And Tired Of Searching For Reviews of the 1867 Performance of Francis Talfourd's Shylock, or, The Merchant of Venice Preserved...

I offer you this, from the October, 1867 issue of Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine:

Woo Hoo, cardboard! Is there anything it can't do?

Also, on a rambling, unrelated note, here is one reason why Tivo is bad and theatre is good:

Last night I was channel surfing while eating dinner. I flipped past TBS or TNT or USA or whichever "Hey, watch this movie or TV show you've already seen six times" network it was, and they were showing As Good As It Gets. I recall this being a pretty good movie. It was a nicely unusual take on the romantic comedy, and I enjoy watching Jack Nicholson play himself (basically the world's most amusing socially dysfunctional a-hole). One of the better Jack moments is his line delivered to Helen Hunt as they are out to dinner. She has demanded that he pay her a compliment. His response, after a semi-involved story, is this: "You make me want to be a better man." This is one of the more memorable moments in the movie. It is also one hell of a good line. I had enjoyed it a lot the first time I saw the movie, and as I flipped it on last night, there were Helen and Jack at the dinner table, and he was building up to it, and he took his moment, and there was the line, and I was waiting to be smacked across the face with it, or at least moved a little bit, or even just to experience that little twinge of familiar happiness when you re-watch those above-average solid movie moments (Such as, "She has no point. She often has no point. It's part of her charm." Get that one without using the internet and you win a prize), and there was nothing. No reaction from me whatsoever. Jack might as well have said, "you look pretty," or "I like cheese."

I sat for a minute, a little thrown off. Then I remembered that I am a Tivo Owning Time Manipulator Demi-God, and I rewound, and watched the line again. And it was worse. I watched it four times, and here is the thing: Jack Nicholson totally blows this line. He just absolutely misses it. I can't put into words exactly what's missing - and acting is often difficult to critically assess in such specific terms - but it is a flat, unconvincing delivery. The line succeeds in spite of the delivery. (And don't waste your time looking for this scene on YouTube. It's not out there.) In any event, the by-now-quite-belabored point is this: Tivo killed that moment for me. If I hadn't been able to rewind, I would have just dismissed my non-reaction as a product of channel flipping, the moment being sandwiched in between six seconds of the Golf Network and six seconds of World's Wildest Raptor Videos. But watch it four times, and the flaw becomes unavoidable.

This is why theatre is good: it is totally in the moment, and demands that mindset of the audience. The lovely moments, the impactful ones, the dramatic, potentially-pretentious ones, they all wash over you and are gone. There is almost no time to kill them with a magnifying glass. This is not to say that art shouldn't be analyzed, of course. Hell, I'm getting a freaking degree in pretty much exactly that. But it is to say that over analysis can kill the hell out of some wonderful moments, alas. And I'm not saying that "You make me want to be a better man" was even in the top one hundred, but thanks to USATBSTNT and Tivo, it's a whole different viewing experience out there. Be careful.

And now it is toooooo late. And those damn reviews have not, in the past twenty minutes, looked themselves up. Lazy bastards. Do I have to do everything myself?