Patriot Games Why has American pro sports become so tied up with garish displays of patriotism? "In many cities, your average Sunday NFL game contains more patriotic overkill than a USO show in Kuwait. In addition to becoming a profitable form of mass entertainment, pro sports have become an effective means for the political and financial elite to package their values and ideas. This is why sports in this country reflect a distinctly US project, rooted in aspirations for greatness as well as conquest and oppression." The Nation 08/08/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:24 pm
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Settlement In Nazi Art Looting Case "As the result of an out-of-court settlement, Bay Area resident Thomas Bennigson will receive $6.5 million from Marilynn Alsdorf of Chicago for a Pablo Picasso painting reportedly stolen by the Nazis from Bennigson's grandmother years before Alsdorf acquired it in 1975... The settlement ends a protracted legal battle over Picasso's 1922 oil 'Femme en blanc' (Woman in White). The dispute began in 2002, when Bennigson sued to have the painting returned to him." Los Angeles Times 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 6:46 am
Critic Hughes Disparages BBC Art Poll The BBC is polling its audience to choose Britons' favorite piece of art. "In what the BBC has described as the first ever national survey of paintings to be held anywhere in the world, the public have been invited to vote for any painting in Britain to determine the nation's greatest work of art. The poll has attracted such artistic luminaries to discuss their favourite painting as Jack Vettriano and Boris Johnson, but held no attraction for Time Magazine critic Robert Hughes who was scheduled to appear on Saturday's broadcast. Yesterday, he dismissed the poll as a 'minor circulation-building exercise' and said he refused to discuss it because it was of 'no relevance'." Scotland On Sunday 08/07/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:51 pm
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Land of Wretched Excess In 1872, the U.S. had begun to establish itself as a world power, and much of the country was edging away from the wild frontier mentality. With the desire for greater global respect came a desire for high culture, something most Americans hadn't had a lot of time for previously. So when the city of Boston invited a group of European composers to bring their music (and their considerable) reputations to American shores, it was a big deal. A concert hall seating 100,000 was erected, and the star of the show, Johan Strauss, Jr., was treated like royalty as he led an eye-popping 20,000-piece orchestra, assisted by more than 100 assistant conductors. To Strauss, it was a gross excess antithetical to music's nature. To America, it was only the beginning... Minnesota Public Radio 08/09/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 5:49 am
What To Make Of Free Beethovens? Recording industry people are still pondering the phenomenal demand (1.4 million downloads) for the BBC's free downloads of Beethoven. "Everyone in the industry was astounded at the result. So astounded, that they have been left on the back foot. No one doubts now that a huge appetite exists in the marketplace for classical music delivered straight to your computer or on to your iPod. But how best to assuage that appetite? The BBC downloads may have been free but if a commercial label got even 10 per cent of that response it would still be a huge leap for downloading. Forward-thinking record-company executives are already talking about using free downloads as a method to tempt new classical buyers in the future." The Independent (UK) 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 9:17 pm
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Convenience And Art In A Prettier Package After four long years of contruction, Washington, D.C.'s Kennedy Center has finally removed all the orange barrels and concrete barriers, and unveiled its new look. "The front is now swept and polished with two fountains churning away in front of its grand entrances... Other improvements include a broad staircase facing the Watergate complex, an extended bike path that leads from the center's front to the Roosevelt Bridge and granite sidewalks, replacing the sometimes slippery marble. New bus shelters east of the center are fitted with polished wooden benches and a wavy canopy. All the roadways and sidewalks are freshly paved, and there is a circle for taxis." Washington Post 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 7:11 am
Orange County In The Black Yet Again Southern California's Orange County Performing Arts Center has reported a $359,000 surplus for its 2004-05 season, the center's 19th consecutive year without a deficit. The PAC is undergoing a $200 million expansion, which is 60% complete, and managed to hit a new high for contributed income even as construction continued. Orange County Register (CA) 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 5:19 am
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Oh No, Yoko! The new musical based on the life of John Lennon has New York's theatre world all abuzz - but for the wrong reasons. Two directors have already left the production, and retooling has been constant and contradictory. "There are also complaints that the show... has become nothing but a Lennon whitewash job, turning one of the 20th century's most complex cultural icons into a bland, peace-loving hippie. His drug use is just hinted at; his bisexuality ignored; and his serial philandering only dealt with head-on in one scene. Backstage, the mood at Lennon is grim." So who's behind all the problems at what ought to be a blockbuster show? Why, it's Yoko Ono, of course. New York Post 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 6:58 am
Coveting The Geeks You might expect a show entitled "The One-Man Star Wars Trilogy" to attract a bunch of costumed nerds and one-track-minded sci-fi geeks, but... oh, okay, you'd be right. But though Charles Ross's tour de Force "may seem like just an oddball summer gimmick, it is in some ways the logical extension of where commercial theater is headed. The crowds at 'Spamalot,' a highly polished imitation of old Monty Python skits, laugh before the punch lines. And the many jukebox musicals - which, don't fool yourself, are not going away - preach to the converted. The element of surprise matters less than the comforting pleasure of seeing something familiar. The geek audience has become highly sought after by Broadway producers. And everyone else, if they want to be in on the fun, has no choice but to join in." The New York Times 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 6:14 am
Minnesota Fringe Gets Naked The Minnesota Fringe is the biggest festival of its kind in the U.S., boasting 25 venues and hundreds of performances in a single two-week period. And while many fringe festivals have embraced politics this year, the Minnesota Fringers have gone a different way. Specifically, a shocking number of this year's productions are focused, laserlike, on sex, which wouldn't be surprising in, say, New York, but which seems a tad out of place in the buttoned-up Midwest. The Fringe's director has an explanation: "A lot of it is the Teen Fringe. We don't censor the teens, and it turns out that when you let teens talk about whatever they want, they talk about sex." City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul) 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 6:02 am
Sittin' In The Back Row... Critic Howard Kissel usually sits in prime seats when he goes to Broadway. So he headed for the balconies of popular shows to see how the rest of us live. "Given the sophisticated state of amplification, hearing is never a problem upstairs. But the fact that performers can rely on their body mikes means they do not feel a need to project their characters all the way upstairs the way they had to in the old days." New York Daily News 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 9:30 pm
Broadway's August Busier Than Usual Six shows are closing on Broadway in the next few weeks. "All the departures will still leave Broadway with 20 shows (21 if "Lennon," which opens Aug. 14 at the Broadhurst, does well with critics and ticket buyers), more than usual in the summertime when it always has been the custom to see the total of legiters and musicals playing on the N.Y. boards reduced to a handful. (In years past there have been as few as 10 during the dog days of August.)" Backstage 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:57 pm
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Colleges Offer Limited Digital Books Ten US universities are offering digital versions of assigned books this fall. "Alongside the new and used versions of Dante's "Inferno" and "Essentials of Psychology" will be little cards offering 33 percent off if students decide to download a digital version of a text instead of buying a hard copy. That's not a bad deal for a cash-strapped student facing book bills in the hundreds of dollars. But there are trade-offs. The new digital textbook program imposes strict guidelines on how the books can be used, including locking the downloaded books to a single computer and setting a five-month expiration date, after which the book can't be read." CNet News 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 8:28 pm
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Who Trusts Movie Critics, Anyway? Sony Pictures settled a lawsuit last week over the imagiary critic it invented to say good things about terrible films, agreeing to pay $5 to anyone who claims to have seen one of the flicks because of the supposedly good review. This is madness, says Jeremy Dauber. "Isn't it the case that anyone who is willing to be convinced under any circumstances to see the Rob Schneider picture 'The Animal' deserves what they get? You would think they might be thankful for the lesson." Besides, how is what Sony did any worse than the common studio practice of twisting a critic's words into a positive statement with the clever use of ellipses? The Christian Science Monitor (Boston) 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 6:32 am
Apparently, Only The Name Is Evil "[The] Texas-based concert, radio and billboard giant Clear Channel Communications announced Tuesday that its Chicago music operations will now be called Elevated Concerts... Chicago remains one of the few major markets in the United States that still boasts a powerful local concert promotion company," and many musicians and venues prefer any alternative to working with the monolithic Clear Channel. That poses a problem for the company, and the Chicago name change is being seen as a test of whether Clear Channel's image as a near-monopoly can be pushed under the carpet. If it works, you can expect more of the same in other cities across the U.S. Chicago Sun-Times 08/10/05
Posted: 08/10/2005 6:25 am
Blockbuster Video Posts A Big Loss "The company has been hurt by a 19-week Hollywood box-office slump during the spring and summer that is now working its way into the rental market. The company said industry weakness should continue in the third quarter before the video release schedule improves in the fourth quarter." Backstage 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 6:15 pm
Study: Movies Don't Glamorize Smoking A new study says that instead of glamorizing smoking, movies showing characters smoking makes them less desirable. "The study concluded that villainous characters are actually more likely to be smokers than heroes – 36 per cent of bad guys were smokers, trumping the 21 per cent of admirable characters who smoked." CBC 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:42 pm
Dopey And Sleepy On Drugs? (Nope, Just Computers) Last month Disney closed the last of its hand-drawing animators studios. "Of course, future Disney features will not be made by robots but by skilled human animators working with a different kind of tool. But the demise of hand-drawn animation at Disney is a sad and significant cultural watershed that deserves a proper mourning rather than a brief P.R. notice." OpinionJournal.com 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 5:22 pm
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Gielgud Resigns From Houston Ballet Maina Gielgud has resigned as artistic advisor to Houston Ballet. She said she resigned in early July because her situation "had become increasingly ambivalent and uncomfortable. Last season, despite a number of attendant problems, including the threat of canceling my version of Giselle, I still hoped that for 2005-2006 there might be some way of establishing a viable relationship." She said her views and artistic director Christopher Welch's "have diverged rapidly in relation to the long-term goals, vision, ideals, management style and methods of directing a classically based ballet company. ... It has been increasingly difficult to understand where his vision lies, what his goals are'." Hoston Chronicle 08/09/05
Posted: 08/09/2005 7:23 pm
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