Blockbasters - A Real Conversation-Stopper "While more people are going to the movies than ever before, they're talking about them less than ever before. It was not always so. Once upon a time, even popular movies were the subject of vigorous conversation. A generation ago, proto-blockbusters like The Exorcist, The Deer Hunter, Annie Hall and Dirty Harry were as hotly debated as they were repeatedly seen. Discussions of movies — their meaning, quality, morality — were the stuff of entire talk shows. Today, the only thing that passes more inconsequentially than the movie is the media gab it generates." Toronto Star 06/27/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 7:36 am
Venice - Who Was In Charge Here? Perhaps the menu for this year's Venice Biennale looked good on paper. But it turned out as a mish-mash. "What was supposed to signal democracy, open-endedness and all-inclusiveness appeared more like an event headed by a curator reluctant to shoulder such a herculean task on his own." The Art Newspaper 06/27/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 7:59 am
Surprise - Chapmans Win A Prize "The Chapman brothers, the most studiedly shocking of the rapidly ageing generation of young British artists, yesterday won the £25,000 Charles Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work in the Royal Academy summer exhibition. The brothers were more genuinely shocked yesterday than any viewer of their works: despite their fame, and infamy, they have never before won a major art prize." The Guardian (UK) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:27 pm
Restorers Enlist Bacteria To Fix Frescoes Art restorers in Pisa, Italy have discovered that bacteria applied to medieval frescoes that were covered in glue 50 years years can cut through the glue and reveal the painting. "Scientists from Milan University have shown that the bacterium Pseudomonas stutzeri, applied with water on cotton wool, can eat through 80% of the glue in about 10 hours. Chunks of the 14th- and 15th-century series of frescoes at the Camposanto (cemetery) were removed for repair and restoration in the 1950s" when they were covered in glue, and restorers have been trying to figure out how to remove the substance ever since. The Guardian (UK) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:15 pm
Music From Outside "So what exactly is Outsider Music? You might as well ask, “What is Outsider Art?” In a field occupied by a dozen or so jostling factions, the overall spectrum remains bewilderingly inclusive. Like its more closely monitored visual counterpart, O.M. practitioners range from the infantile to the institutionally committed — almost anything qualifies. 'Outsider music includes all manner of incompetent but sincere recordings, music by the mentally challenged, industry rejects, eccentrics, singing celebrities, lovable oddballs, grandiose statements, etc'."
LAWeekly 06/26/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 7:56 am
What Makes A Music Festival Work? The UK is overrun with music festivals. So "why do we have music festivals, what do they achieve and where can it all go wrong - or right? Essentially, a festival, even an early-music festival, must be about the new and the fresh as well as celebrating the established. If it seeks only to reinforce preconceptions and repeat the familiar, it has failed. It is all too easy to build a programme of nothing but popular classics and, certainly in financial terms, all too tempting. But while such a festival may deliver an audience, it does nothing to extend musical horizons, or to create a buzz." The Guardian (UK) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:12 pm
The Bad Bad Business Of Music "I know that the British music industry is in crisis. You know that the British music industry is in crisis. My parents - whose interest in music is so profound that they have now owned a CD player for 15 years without ever learning how to use it - know that the British music industry is in crisis." But sitting around whining about it solves nothing. The music industry is in crisis because of a series of bad business decisions and an inability to change with a changing world. The Guardian (UK) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:09 pm
Music Industry - Steps Behind The music recording industry is chasing consumers to punish them for downloading music. But perhaps it's because the industry has not kept up with what consumers want. "The problem for the industry is: Who makes the money in the future? The people who are making the money now are much less interested in making these changes. It is not an industry that has had to change much. Traditionally the music industry has been about selling product on a piece of plastic. The industry has been clinging to CDs for too long." BBC 06/25/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 8:27 pm
How Gay Is Gay? "Openly gay and lesbian artists - writers, directors, actors, composers - are more visible than ever in 2003 America. Indeed, when two men can share a kiss on national TV in celebration of their 25-year relationship and the Tony they have just won, it seems as if a milestone of acceptance and assimilation has been reached. And, certainly, gay characters are more in evidence than ever before on stage, screen, and TV. When a mainstream newspaper like USA Today runs an article asking, 'How 'in' is it to be gay? Let us 'out' the ways,' something must be afoot." Backstage 06/27/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 8:14 am
NEA - A Slight Increase? While US state arts agencies are being pared back or eliminated, the National Endowment for the Arts is lining up for a slight increase. The House Interior Appropriations Subcommittee is proposing to increase the National Endowment for the Arts budget to $117.5 million for fiscal year 2004 - up $1 million from the current year.
Backstage 06/26/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 8:01 am
Singapore: Guggenheim-Dreaming Singapore has seen an explosion in arts activity in the past decade. "The number of performing arts activities here has ballooned from about 1,900 in 1993 to more than 5,000 last year, and attendance for ticketed performing arts activities has risen by more than 200,000 to more than a million in the same period." So plans are being made to build more - and hopes are building to attract an international musem... The Straits-Times (Singapore) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 11:01 pm
John Adams, Star John Adams is the classical music's star composer. "While working within classical conventions, Adams has done more than anyone to smudge the lines between rock, jazz and classical. His music used to be called crossover or minimalist - intended more as insult than as technical analysis. Now such epithets are outmoded, thanks in part to his own willingness to write music with direct appeal, not generally a habit among avant-garde composers in the late 1970s when he started. Tunes then were on a par with antimacassars or lace doilies: redundant and declasse, you simply didn't. Adams reminded us: you could and did. Critics who sucked in their cheeks at the blatant melodies of his best-known work, the 1987 opera Nixon in China, now sheepishly concede that it is a modern masterpiece." London Evening Standard 06/26/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:32 pm
Three Decades Of Discount Theatre TKTS The discount theatre ticket booth in Times Square is 30 years old. "Back then, the average TKTS ticket went for $4.50, at 50 percent off. Now, it's ten times higher, the average price being $40.75." Over three decades TKTS has sold 43 million tickets to Broadway shows collectively worth $940 million... Backstage 06/27/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 8:11 am
West End's First New Theatre In 70 Years Cameron Mackintosh is building a new theatre. "The 500-seat Sondheim will be the first new theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue in more than 70 years. Not that you will be able to guess. The truly clever, if controversial design led by the husband-and-wife architect team of Nick Thompson and Clare Ferraby, of RHWL Architects' Arts Team, will join the existing Gielgud and Queen's theatres at their Edwardian hips." The Guardian (UK) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:21 pm
The Right Of The People To Sell Books... Last year two 20-somethings decided to sell books on the streets of New Orleans. But the city said they needed a permit. But it wasn't possible to get a permit. "It turned out New Orleans had permits for street vendors selling food, flowers, razor blades, shoelaces, candles, and pencils—but not books. And anything that wasn't explicitly permitted was forbidden." So the pair fought the ban and ended up in the state Supreme Court - where they won... Reason 06/20/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 8:07 am
What Canadian Publishing Looks Like A new comprehensive study on the state of Canadian publishing reports that there are more Canadian books being published and demand for them is increasing... Toronto Star 06/27/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 7:40 am
Embargo Theatre Hillary Clinton and JK Rowling are suing publications for breaking embargoes on their books. But should a publisher be able to sue a newspaper for reporting what's in a book? "Clinton and Rowling may honestly believe the press violated their copyrights by quoting from and discussing the contents of their books prior to the official pub date. But neither author has much of a legal case, and I'm sure their lawyers would confess over drinks that the noise and litigation is mostly theater." Slate 06/26/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 7:30 am
Should Steinbeck Fear The Oprah Treatment? So Oprah thought retreating to the classics would rid her book club of controversy? "John Steinbeck's selection by Oprah is likely to confirm the suspicions of those critics who look down their noses at him as a simplistic writer not worthy of inclusion in the American pantheon. For starters, if East of Eden is a classic, it's a disputed one. A handful of Steinbeck partisans defend it as one of Steinbeck's great books, to be placed alongside works like Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. Others argue that it's flawed but still worthwhile, even a masterpiece. But an equally large—if not larger—group thinks that hardly anything good can be said about it." Slate 06/27/03
Posted: 06/27/2003 7:25 am
Money And The Literary House A wealthy California woman "paid £1.25 million for a crumbling English country house and spent a further £10 million converting it into a library and study centre, equipped with all her beautiful, arcane books. Chawton House, Hampshire, once owned by Jane Austen's brother and set in 275 acres, is about to open to the public after 11 years of toil, sweat and village politics." The Telegraph (UK) 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:45 pm
Women MOTV (Missing On TV) Where are the women TV directors? A new study reports that "for the third consecutive year, white males directed more than 80% of episodes of the top 40 series. During the 2002-03 season, 13 of those shows did not hire any minority directors, 10 did not hire women directors and three series — CBS' 'CSI: Miami' and 'Yes Dear' and Fox's '24' — hired neither women nor minority directors, the study contends." Los Angeles Times 06/27/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:51 pm
Sadler's Wells: Reinvent Programming? "For the past few years, Sadler's Wells has been going about its task respectably, acting as a receiving house for international contemporary dance on tour, and hosting the odd bit of touring opera or musical theatre." Sadler's new chief Jean-Luc Choplin "is not content with this niche. "The history of the second half of the 20th century has been of attempts to create access to high arts for all. It's been done by cheap tickets, education projects, access initiatives. But all these have worked only to an extent. I want to create a genuinely popular theatre. Ticket pricing and access is important - but you have to change the programming." The Guardian (UK) 06/26/03
Posted: 06/26/2003 10:23 pm
