Philosophy Through Story? A documentary on philosopher Jacques Derrida poses more questions than it answers. Can you learn about a philosopher's ideas by telling his life story? "How much can be learned of the life of the mind from the life of a great mind? What can a narrative approach, whether in film or in writing, tell us about the seemingly timeless world of concepts and constructs? Derrida notes that he is constitutionally incapable of telling stories, and so he tells none." Boston Globe 02/02/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 1:03 am
Phillips Auction House Sold - Will Downsize Phillips' forray into the high-end art auction business has come to an end. French billionaire Phillipe Arnault has sold his stake in the company, and it is laying off workers and downsizing. Arnault bought Phillips in 1999 and "spent tens of millions of pounds on guaranteeing money to vendors, regardless of how their works of art performed in the saleroom, in an attempt to raise the company's profile and win market share from rivals." The Telegraph (UK) 01/29/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:29 am
- The Downfall Of Phillips - So Unnecessary Phillips was founded in 1796, and did fine until four years ago when the push to compete with Sotheby's and Christie's turned serious. "Phillips, which was supposed to become a major force in the art market, is left with just half a dozen departments and some 85 employees. This journey to disaster started out sensibly enough. Arnault's LVMH group has made a fortune from marketing scent, champagne and suitcases and Arnault believed that selling art would be no different..." The Telegraph (UK) 02/03/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:13 am
Feminist Art - Three Decades Later "How does feminist art of the 1970s hold up? Does it seem historically significant or merely transiently faddish?" Feminist artists' "demands for parity, for an end to being patronized, and for acknowledgment that art should accommodate a distinctly female consciousness made headlines at the time." Philadelphia Inquirer 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 8:35 pm
La Scala Renovation Passes One-Year, Picks Up More Protests Restoration of the La Scala opera house has now been going on a year. The anniversary has been marked with court challenges, filed by preservationists arguing that "the new designs were ugly and the contracting for the work was flawed." The city briefly opened the building to allay fears, and city officials defended the project against court challenges. Miami Herald (AP) 02/02/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:09 am
Even Threat Of Jail For Music Pirates Doesn't Satisfy Recording Industry Last week the European Commission issued a draft directive to try to discourage music file traders. The directive "called for counterfeiters to be jailed and their bank accounts frozen." Evidently even the threat of jail isn't enough for the big recording companies. "The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry said the measures failed to introduce 'urgently needed measures to hold back the epidemic of counterfeiting'." BBC 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 5:45 pm
Missouri To Discontinue Arts Funding? Missouri Gov. Bob Holden's proposes to eliminate funding for the state arts council, which "distributed as much as $5 million in the flush year 2001 to organizations as varied as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra to the family folk festival in St. Joseph, Mo. Holden proposes that the council pay for arts programs by dipping into the Missouri Cultural Trust, a state savings account that matches private donations with public money." St. Louis Post-Dispatch 02/02/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:55 am
Where's Glenn Gould Avenue? And Why Isn't There One? "I think I'd be the teensiest bit more receptive to the fiscal argument against supporting and celebrating Canadian arts, if those who make it so stridently made any attempt to support and celebrate the arts in ways that did not involve spending lots of money. The Roman Catholic Church seems to have less stringent regulations about canonization than we have about naming streets after our artists. How much does it cost to put up a street sign? How much does it cost to weave into the fabric of our cities and towns the evidence of real artists creating real art?" The Globe & Mail (Canada) 02/03/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:46 am
Starving Scotland's Culture There's a cultural crisis in Scotland. Funding for culture is down, and there seems to be little commitment on the part of the government to make culture a priority. "The Executive responds by arguing that it needs to concentrate on health and education. The urge to fund anything cultural has been sapped by the overspend on the parliament building, heralding in an almost Covenanter-like distrust of frivolity." Scottish arts are healthy now. But does the Scottish Executive plan to "starve Scotland back into the cultural night that preceded the Act of Union - and what an irony that would be." The Observer (UK) 02/02/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:04 am
Fogel To Become American Symphony Orchestra Leagure CEO Henry Fogel will take over as CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League when he retires as manager of the Chicago Symphony later this year. As manager of the Chicago orchestra since 1985, Fogel became one of the most influential arts administrators in the United States. Andante 02/02/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:51 am
Vaclav Havel Retires Playwright Vaclav Havel retires this week after 13 years as President of Czechoslovakia and then - after the 1993 secession of Slovakia - of the Czech Republic. "Of all the world's leaders in our time, Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel have been the most loved and admired. When he took the leadership of the 'Velvet Revolution' in 1989, and when he moved into the Castle high above Prague as President of the Republic, it seemed that the Czechs and Slovaks were the luckiest people in Europe. And, for a time, the Czechs and Slovaks thought so, too..." The Observer (UK) 02/03/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:00 am
August Wilson And The History Of An Era Certainly, no playwright of August Wilson's generation — he is 57 — has proved as ubiquitous. Every one of his first eight dramas has played in New York, seven of them on Broadway, and collectively they have received nearly 2,000 productions, from amateur companies to regional theaters to London's Royal National Theater. Mr. Wilson has won two Pulitzer Prizes, been a Pulitzer finalist four other times, and taken seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards." A new production of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" on Broadway seems to bring his career full circle. The New York Times 02/03/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 11:45 pm
London's New Theatre - About Time "Museum directors have long since realised that the overall aesthetic experience of visiting a museum is vital to a full appreciation of the art it held, and now theatre directors are catching up, as Bennetts Associates' new Hampstead Theatre demonstrates. The theatre, at Swiss Cottage in London, opens on February 14, when it will be the first new stand-alone producing theatre in London since the National Theatre in 1976." The Telegraph (UK) 02/03/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:39 am
- Thoroughly Practical Theatre "The Hampstead Theatre is a great achievement, and the more so for having seen off the enemies of promise that are the rules and restrictions that come with Lottery funding. The Arts Council, for example, having binged on earlier projects, set a severe limit of £10 million on their grant to this one. Compared with the hasty, ramshackle architecture of Sadler's Wells, Hampstead stands out. It also avoided the drastic cost overruns that afflicted the revamped Royal Court." London Evening Standard 01/29/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:30 am
Play About Suicide Bombing Canceled In Cincinnati A 50-minute play about suicide bombers and the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis was supposed to tour Cincinnati area high schools beginning in March, but the tour has been canceled after a protest by local Muslims. That in turn has set off protests. "Cincinnati's reputation as a community that tries to control the arts and allows bigots to dominate the discussion is accurate. Once again Cincinnati looks small, foolish and provincial." The New York Times 02/03/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 11:13 pm
How Live Is Broadway Live Theatre Music? The battle looming on Broadway between the musicians' union and producers is being cast as a fight over whether there will be live music in orchestra pits. On the other hand - union rules requiring a minimum number of musicians to be employed at theatres even when not all the musicians are required for a show, are unreasonable almost by any standard. Meanwhile - today's theatre orchestras are so highly miked that it's often difficult to tell whether the music is live or not. Where's the artistic value in any of this? Newsday 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 11:02 pm
Kids - Forgetting The Classics? Are kids losing touch with the literaryt kids' classics? A survey in Britain reports that only three percent of children had read "Little Women." "Only 12% had actually read Alice in Wonderland, only 2% 'Swallows and Amazons', and only 6% 'The Secret Garden'. By contrast, 81% had read 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'. 'The Lord of the Rings' scored 31%."
The Guardian (UK) 02/01/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 7:35 am
No More Freebie Movie Tickets For LA Actors During Oscar season, movie theatres in Los Angeles have traditionally given free admission to actors with SAG union cards. Not this year. "This year, though, actors are getting another tough break in a tough town, as theater owners apparently have cut off the freebies many of them have traditionally offered to card-carrying members of the Screen Actors Guild. The reasons for the cut-off are a bit murky." Los Angeles Times 02/03/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:23 am
Is Indie Film Dead? A question from the frontlines at the Sundance Film Festival: "Is independent cinema dead in the United States - or, is it just playing possum?" Los Angeles Times 02/02/03
Posted: 02/03/2003 12:20 am
Local From Afar - A DJ Who Has No Idea What He's Introducing Clear Channel - the company that owns hundreds of radio stations in the US, is making use of sophisticated editing and mixing to splice together shows for local markets that sound local, but in actuality are recorded in studios often thousands of miles away. "With a lot of cutting and pasting, the engineers create 11 customized hourlong countdown shows for cities like New York, Philadelphia and Detroit, and two national pop and rhythm-and-blues countdowns for other markets..." Carson Daly, the host, doesn't even know which songs he's introducing on his shows. The New York Times 02/03/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 11:32 pm
Satellite Radio Makes A Push For Customers Are Americans ready to pay $10 a month to listen to radio? Two satellite radio companies hope so. So what's wrong with conventional radio? Just about everything, the companies say - annoyances like "advertising, the limited reach of AM and FM signals, and, most of all, playlists confined to a small number of heavily promoted singers and groups." So what's better about satellite radio? The "chance to hear unsigned bands, live music, seldom-heard cuts from well-known artists and genres of music that have no home today on the AM and FM radio dials, like the electronica that shows up only in clubs and car commercials." The New York Times 02/03/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 11:24 pm
Making Toronto Sound Like New Yawk Many American TV and movie projects shoot in Canada to save money. But the stories usually are set in American locations. That means that a city like Toronto often gets called to stand in for cities like New York. And how to pull off the illusion? Coaches who train the Canadian actors in how to sound New Yawk. "When casting agents in town get the character breakdowns for a movie, it's stipulated in big bold type across each page that actors must sound American." The New York Times 02/03/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 11:18 pm
A Little Movie Theatre Competition - That's What's Needed How do movie theatres get the movies they want to show? A Montreal theatre entrepreneur charges that "Famous Players and Cineplex Odeon, the largest theatre chains in the country, use their size to pressure distributors to decide who gets the films." He also says the two companies have split up the Canadian market so as not to seriously compete with one another, and that if competition was opened up to smaller players, ticket prices would fall and the range of movies shown would increase. Toronto Star 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 6:48 pm
Running Numbers - Hollywood Box Office Doesn't Add Up "It's commonly assumed, both inside and outside of Hollywood, that if a movie doesn't hit No. 1 at North American ticket wickets in its first weekend, then it's at best a disappointment and at worst an outright flop. The Monday morning quarterbacking of box-office stats has become so common, even people who don't go to movies can quote you the numbers for various films, like stockbrokers discussing share prices. Yet box-office figures are so inherently flawed, and so wilfully distorted, as to be almost meaningless." Toronto Star 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 6:41 pm
Men Of Dance - Busting One Stereotype For Another A documentary about four star male dancers at American Ballet Theatre tries hard to portray them as normal guys. Too hard. Obviously the documentary-maker wants to bust stereotypes of male dancers being sissies. But to hear everyone tell it in tonight's broadcast, dancing is just a guy's thing. For example, "Ethan Stiefel likes to ride a motorcycle and what chiefly attracted him to ballet, he says, is the opportunity to place his hands on women's bodies. No, no, no. Believe it or not, men in tights are drawn to ballet by a calling, a compulsion toward artistic endeavor and yes, ambition." The New York Times 02/03/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 11:40 pm
Where's The Imaginative Dance Needed For LA? With the LA Philharmonic moving out of the The Music Center of Los Angeles, dance fans are hoping to see more dance brought to town. Very little dance has been seen there for years. To that end, the Music Center has taken a baby step, bring three companies to town. "The companies are certainly worthy; for the Music Center, however, this seems a discouragingly safe and unimaginative way to begin. What's really called for is a wake-up call to the vast, hibernating dance audience. This selection does nothing to define the place that the Music Center wants to stake out for itself as a dance presenter." Orange County Register 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 8:52 pm
Developing Dance Outside The Big Apple In the American dance world, New York is the center of the universe. Every choreographer and dance company feels the need to be seen there. But a panel of choreographers meeting in Cleveland stressed the importance of making careers outside of New York. "The regional voice makes a difference. There's a different kind of complexion to dance in Seattle, Austin [Texas], Cleveland..." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 8:28 pm
History Of Dance In Two Weeks The Kennedy Center is embarking on another big project - this time in dance. "Dancegoers will get a side-by-side sampling of some of the most influential choreography in ballet history, as well as a couple of seldom-seen nuggets with a high curiosity factor." American Ballet Theatre, the Bolshoi Ballet and the Royal Danish Ballet Kirov Ballet, Miami City Ballet and dancers from the English National Ballet and Royal Ballet will all appear in programs over a two week period in March. Washington Post 02/02/03
Posted: 02/02/2003 6:25 pm
