The Enterainment Value Of Destroying New York And now, another movie that manages to destroy New York City. Why do we seem to get so much pleasure wrecking one of America's greatest cities? "Cities are meant to be civic, communal places, yet - looking at Piranesi's panoramas of ruined Rome, or Bill Brandt's photographs of a lunar London during the blitz - we take a perverse pleasure in imagining them emptied. Is this because we wish our obnoxious fellow citizens dead, or because we know that the city will outlive us?" The Observer (UK) 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 10:54 pm
Las Vegas - America's Best? "In a city where the only currency is currency, there is a table-level democracy of luck. Las Vegas is perhaps the most color-blind, class-free place in America. As long as your cash or credit line holds out, no one gives a damn about your race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, address, family lineage, voter registration or even your criminal arrest record. As long as you have chips on the table, Vegas deftly casts you as the star in an around-the-clock extravaganza. For all of America's manifold unfulfilled promises of upward mobility, Vegas is the only place guaranteed to come through--even if it's for a fleeting weekend." The Nation 05/15/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:51 pm
The Market For "New" Michelangelos "These days, the icon of Renaissance art is Florence's greatest single brand and the global Michelangelo market is booming. You might imagine that as the years go by, the chances of finding a long-lost Michelangelo would shrink. But no. As one expert has observed, as the price tag on the world's greatest artists keeps soaring, so, miraculously, more hidden Michelangelo gems keep being discovered." The Guardian (UK) 05/17/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 10:30 pm
Apres Le Carbuncle - UK Architecture After Prince Charles Twenty years ago the Prince of Wales famously opened his attack on modern British architecture by comparing it to "a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much loved and elegant friend." "Perhaps what he could not see at the time was that far from retreating into a cosy world of agreeable Georgian architecture, British architects would return to the fray with a forward-looking architecture that is, on the whole, far superior to what had gone before the carbuncle speech at Hampton Court." The Guardian (UK) 05/17/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 10:16 pm
Why Do We Focus On The $ Of Art? Richard Chang wonders why magazines like ARTnews focus so much on the price of art. "Sure, folks are curious about money, and any journalist worth his or her salt should be following the buck to a certain degree. Plus, we are entering the auction season, which emanates out of New York, London and Paris. But don't articles like these reinforce a small, ultrasuccessful cadre, ignoring the majority of skilled and passionate painters, sculptors, installation, video and performance artists?" Orange County Register 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:41 pm
Saving A Prehistoric Hill By Calling It A Building? Conservationists are attempting to have Silbury Hill in Wiltshire reclassified as a building to protect one of the most enigmatic prehistoric structures in Europe. The move would reclassify the largest manmade mound in Europe. "The guardians of the 4,700-year-old hill have been trying to persuade people to keep off Silbury since 1974, when it was closed to the public, without destroying its appearance with intrusive fencing. The monument came close to destruction three years ago when torrential winter rain seeped into shafts left by earlier excavation, which collapsed. Although English Heritage has carried out repairs, the whole structure is vulnerable." The Guardian (UK) 05/17/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:11 pm
Barnes - Museum Or School? "Ever since trustees appointed by Lincoln University gained control of the foundation's board, the debate on how the Barnes should operate now and in the future has been skewed, either through ignorance or deliberately. The public, the media and the art community have long perceived the foundation to be a museum. On the other hand, the foundation's indenture of trust, which governs its operation, is quite specific that it's a school. Lower Merion Township agrees, because residential zoning along Latches Lane allows schools but not museums." Philadelphia Inquirer 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:02 pm
Dead-ending Paint? Being a painter is tough these days, writes Blake Gopnik. "There will always be talented artists who can overcome the difficulties that painting faces. In fact, with the odds so stacked against them, the handful of truly good paintings that get turned out look that much more impressive. I'll bet that somehow, somewhere, someday -- in a decade, a century, could be a millennium or two -- a whole new kind of painted work will come along to breathe new life into the medium. Painting has dead-ended before, and each time a Titian or a Monet, a Picasso or a Pollock has hit on a way out that no critic could have guessed at in advance. Any critic who insists that can never happen again is asking to eat crow." Washington Post 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:43 pm
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Music School Makes Big (Economic) Impact A recent study shows that the Cleveland Institute of Music "as an annual economic impact in Ohio of about $92.3 million. The firm surveyed students, faculty, staff and audience members to come up with the figure, which surprised even the Impact Economics consultant who did the study." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 10:47 pm
Death Of The Small Record Store "Across the nation, record stores are being hit with a perfect storm of challenges. Aggressive competition from Best Buy and other big box retailers, Internet piracy, online music shopping and slumping CD sales have pushed many smaller stores out of business or to the brink of bankruptcy. The survivors are having to rework decades-old business models. And it's not just store owners who are singing a sad tune." The Plain Dealer (Cleveland) 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 10:34 pm
A Downloading Plan That Pays Musicians Harvard professor Terry Fisher has unveiled a plan that would pay artists for their music and allow (even encourage) rampant downloading. "Fisher advocates an alternative compensation system that would pay artists based on the popularity of their music. Artists would first have to register their work with the copyright office, which would track how many times that work was downloaded. Revenue generated from taxes on things like Internet access and the sale of MP3 players would then be used to pay the artists." Wired 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:45 pm
Tonys Signal Broadway Breadth The range of nominations for this year's Tonys give a good sense of the health of Broadway, writes Howard Kissel. "These nominations suggest that "mainstream" theater is now less easy to characterize than it was when, say, "Death of a Salesman" or "The Crucible" won Best Play or "Diary of Anne Frank" beat "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" for that award." New York Daily News 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 11:00 pm
Guthrie - Return To Musical Theatre After a decade, Minneapolis' Guthrie Theatre stages a musical. So what? Regional theatres in America have largely avoided musical theatre for a long time... St. Paul Pioneer-Press 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:38 pm
Are Britain's Libraries In Danger? A new report in the UK argues that, "although the use of museums and archives in Britain has doubled in Britain during the life of this government, there is an urgent and imminent library crisis. 'If we do not address the fundamental structural problem of the library service,' says the report, not mincing its words, 'there may be no libraries in 10 or 15 years' time'." The Observer (UK) 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:07 pm
A Golden Era For Lit Magazines? "Literary magazines play an ever more indispensable role in the publishing food chain. And recently, especially here on the West Coast, they're starting to swarm..." San Francisco Chronicle 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:29 pm
Hollywood Jobs Disappearing "Hollywood's thousands of journeymen are losing ground, fast, as age-old presumptions and ways of doing business collide with new market forces. In the past few years, the cultural juggernaut known as reality TV and other factors have turned a difficult job market into an untenable one for many of the entertainment industry's rank-and-file actors, artists and technicians. And those jobs that remain often pay less than they did years ago as studios are forced to surrender more of their films' budgets to above-the-line talent, new technology reduces the length of shoots and nonunion shops grab ever bigger shares of the entertainment industry's myriad professions." Orange County Register 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 11:12 pm
Animation - TV's Next Big Ratings Breakthrough? This is the time of year TV execs decide what's going to make their schedules next season. "This year, however, a dark horse has charged onto the TV scene: animation, a genre that to date has provided some of the edgiest and most sophisticated shows on TV. NBC, Fox, the SciFi Channel, and Comedy Central - to name a few - plan to add animated fare to their menu next season. Just as "The Simpsons" essentially saved Fox Network 15 years ago, animated cartoons could become the small screen's pinch hitters, even if they've been benched for a while." Christian Science Monitor 05/14/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 10:10 pm
Protesters Shut Down Cannes Protesting workers shut down the Cannes Film Festival for a time on Saturday. "The demonstration by about 500 entertainment industry workers over government cuts to their unemployment benefits paralysed the seafront area of the Riviera town for about two hours." BBC 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:34 pm
Movie Execs Meet To Discuss Piracy Heads of the world's movie studios meet in Cannes to talk about how to shut down piracy. "Executives from Hollywood, France, India, China, and Russia held an "unprecedented" meeting on Sunday. They said directors should be involved in the campaign because "they are the major victims" of piracy." BBC 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:30 pm
Eisner's Michael Moore Mistake Michael Eisner's decision that Disney wouldn't allow distribution of Michael Moore's new movie was a blunder. "Eisner's ill-conceived decision has managed to accomplish a rare feat in today's poisonously partisan times: He has aggravated the left and the right simultaneously. Liberals are crying censorship while conservatives want to box Eisner's mouse ears for giving Moore -- an obnoxious publicity hound and longtime thorn in the right's side -- a tidal wave of sympathy and free ink." San Jose Mercury-News 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:55 pm
Moore: White House Tried To Stop Movie Release Michael Moore says the Bush White House tried to stop release of his new film Farenheit 9/11. "The director told a Cannes audience the Bush administration wanted to keep the film off screens in the run-up to November's US election. The film examines the Iraq war and alleges connections between the Bush and Bin Laden families." BBC 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 8:46 pm
Dance's Pop Attraction "More and more, dance companies are turning to popular music -- particularly rock 'n' roll -- as a contemporary outlet for new work. Not that this is anything new. Ballet appears to be cutting to the quick in the drive to meet ticket-buyers at the turnstile. The collective reasoning is to attract new and younger audiences, and those who turned out for Joel and Springsteen ranged from teenagers to middle-aged fans." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 11:04 pm
Hip-Hop Makes It To Sadler's Wells "Hip-hop is widely misrepresented as a recent indulgence of loud-mouthed, flashily jewelled, gun-toting black gangsters, whose attitude to women, work and the law leave something to be desired. This is a great shame, because hip-hop is far more properly read as an life-affirming manifestation of the inborn human desire to make entertainment even in abject misery." The Telegraph (UK) 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 10:07 pm
An ABT Heritage American Ballet Theatre's new season gives a fair representation of the company's heritage, writes Tobi Tobias. "Represented first and foremost was the idea of ABT as a custodian of what can loosely be called “the heritage”—classics from the nineteenth century and latter-day works explicitly declaring their adherence to that tradition." Seeing Things (AJBlogs) 05/16/04
Posted: 05/16/2004 9:55 pm
