The Da Vinci Coda As The Da Vinci Code movies falls off movie screens, a blockbuster that failed to meet expectations, and the book on which it's based also ends a long run on the best-seller lists, Jack Miles has some reflections on a cultural phenomenon and what it says about our times... ArtsJournal 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 10:14 pm
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In New York, Expert Eyes Peeled For Stolen Art "New York is often the destination for art that is silently whisked from museums and personal collections, but as the center of the art world, the city has more than its share of cautious eyes watching for suspicious sales, missing links, and unusually rare offerings for relatively inexpensive prices. With the disclosures in the past week that hundreds of pieces of art have been stolen from two prominent Russian museums, New Yorkers in the art business and the law enforcement officials who investigate art crime have been watching to see if any of the pieces make their way through this major throughway for the multibillion-dollar art industry." New York Sun 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 6:10 am
Met Opera Opening An Art Gallery "The gallery, designed by the Manhattan architect Lindy Roy, is named Gallery Met; it is financed by a $1 million donation from Marie Schwartz, a Met board member. It will be open whenever the opera house or the box office is, and through the end of every performance. Nothing is for sale. When the works come down in May, at the end of the opera season, they are to be returned to the artists." The New York Times 08/15/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 10:23 pm
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Documentary's Treatment Of Nazi Era Alienates Salzburg Festival Not all is well this summer between the American Friends of the Salzburg Festival and the festival itself. "Festival officials are miffed with the Friends over that group’s decision to present 'The Salzburg Festival: A Short History,' a new documentary by the British filmmaker Tony Palmer. The festival has disavowed the film, partly because of what festival directors consider Mr. Palmer’s overemphasized and sometimes inaccurate account of the festival’s intertwined relationship with the Nazis." The New York Times 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 3:55 am
Airline Security Endangers Musical Instruments It's getting more and more difficult for musicians to travel with their instruments as airline security gets tougher... The New York Times 08/15/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 10:26 pm
Looking For An American Opera Classic July saw the premiere of several new American operas. "Are any of these new operas towering masterworks that will alter the course of music history while winning the hearts of millions? People have been asking that loaded question of American opera for a hundred years, and the way they phrase it almost demands a negative answer." The New Yorker 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 10:08 pm
San Diego Opera Buys A Home Lyric Opera San Diego has bought its own home. "Of the country's approximately 125 professional opera companies, only 13 (including Lyric) own their own venues. In California, the Lyric is one of just two companies in that category, the other being the Jarvis Conservatory, a Napa-based organization whose performances include opera and zarzuela (a popular Spanish form of operetta)." San Diego Union-Tribune 08/13/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 9:47 pm
Is Bayreuth Endangered? Wolfgang Wagner has been the driving force of the annual Bayreuth Festival for 40 years. But he's 87 and suddenly frail. "Given his sudden physical decline, Bayreuth-watchers have begun to ask who is really running the show and what moves are afoot for an orderly hand-over. 'Wolfgang doesn’t seem to have any clout any more. But the management doesn’t want to talk about the succession'." Financial Times 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 9:05 pm
A Lot Of Fanfare Over Nothing? A debate about Fanfare magazine's pay-for-review policy has broken out, but Kyle Gann believes the debate is overblown. "Given the largely labor-of-love basis on which Fanfare was run, the paid ads seemed to do little beyond ensuring that the magazine would continue to appear. Nobody was getting rich off it, or even anywhere near well-recompensed. With so much massive corporate evil besetting the music business and everyone else from all sides, I have to regard poor little Fanfare as a rather uncharitably chosen target." PostClassic (AJBlogs) 08/12/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 9:07 am
Charge: Brazilian Piano Competition Has Been Rigged The Villa Lobos International Piano Competition begins this week. But the event has been tarnished by accusations of cheating and manipulation of which pianists were allowed into the finals... The New York Times 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 8:15 am
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When Process Really Is The Achievement "By bringing major artists from a number of countries and disciplines together for a summer of shared projects on the UCLA campus, the Asia Pacific Performance Exchange, which began in 1995 and concluded its latest edition over the weekend, can develop potent new fusions of international music or dance. But the final two showcase programs of APPEX 2006 demonstrated one peculiarity of this blueprint. They suggested that the process leading to a performance could be richer and more memorable than the performance itself." Los Angeles Times 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 4:43 am
"The Death Of The Culture Of Criticism" "All in all, it's been a rotten tomato of a summer for America's embattled film critics. 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest' broke box-office records left and right, despite a yowling chorus of negative reviews. M. Night Shyamalan cast Bob Balaban as a persnickety film critic in 'Lady in the Water,' then gleefully killed him off, allowing a snarling jackal-like creature to do the dirty deed. ... To add insult to injury, studios have released a record number of films this year without any press screenings...." But the demotion of the critic is simply a reflection of the era, Patrick Goldstein writes. Los Angeles Times 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 4:15 am
Istanbul Architecture Joins The 21st Century Istanbul has a new modern art museum and a brilliant new mega-shopping mall. "Its 'building as landscape' and sensuous curves tick boxes for architectural fashion, knocking spots off any mall built in Turkey or, indeed, in Britain, and an example of the boom in 'experiential malls' in America and the Far East, where quality of the experience counts as much as what’s sold inside." The Times (UK) 08/15/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 9:36 pm
Book It - The Arts Rethink Their Program Books Arts groups are rethinking what goes in their program books. "As arts groups fight to maintain and renew their audiences, they've realized that any opportunity to capture the viewer's interest and engage them must be fully exploited. Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts is taking the power of the printed word even further: It has entered into an agreement with the publishing house John Wiley & Sons to publish 15 co-branded books designed to bring attention to the performing arts." New York Sun 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 7:06 pm
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Painter Julio Galán, 46 "Julio Galán, a provocative Neo-Expressionist Mexican painter, died on Aug. 4 en route back to his home in Monterrey, Mexico. He was 46. ... Throughout an astoundingly varied, often uneven range of images, he laced references to his childhood and his sexual identity with allusions to Catholicism, the Mexican Baroque, pre-Columbian cultures, retablos and folk art. The result was a kind of postmodern Symbolism: overripe, often perverse, yet mesmerizing." The New York Times 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 4:07 am
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How Much Will Commercial Success Alter NY Fringe? "As its 10th season runs from Aug. 11-27, the New York Intl. Fringe Festival is straddling the line between a grassroots cheerleader for offbeat legit and a seductive draw for commercial hopes. While few in the theater community imagine that all of this year's 217 shows are suited for the big time, even fewer forget 1999. That's the year 'Urinetown' dominated the fest, beginning its march to three Tonys and a two-year Broadway run. That and other transfers -- including 'Matt and Ben' and tuner 'Debbie Does Dallas' -- helped push the festival to a new level of relevance." Variety 08/13/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 8:26 am
Blog Theatre Hits At Edinburgh Fringe "No fewer than four shows based on blogs are appearing at this year's Fringe, including Girl Blog From Iraq: Baghdad Burning, taken from the writings of 27-year-old "Riverbend", who records daily life in Iraq. But what's surprising is that the wave of blog-inspired theatre has been so long in coming; after all, it's the world's fastest-growing genre of writing." The Guardian (UK) 08/15/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 9:16 pm
Scottish National Theatre Proves Its Worth The new National Theatre of Scotland has produced a hit at the Edinburgh Festival. "To all the scepticism and debate about Scotland's even needing a national theatre, to all the sometimes self-lacerating, politically fraught recent inquiries into the devolved nation's culture, the new NTS has slapped down the best kind of answer: rather than more words, a most eloquent piece of work." The Guardian (UK) 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 9:13 pm
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As Nonfiction Blossoms, Literature May Wither "Nonfiction, once relegated to the 'good for you, like oatmeal' shelf, has become the kind of fare readers choose for enjoyment. In this age of declining readership for all sorts of publications, any reading is good reading, right? Maybe. But does a de-emphasis of the literary novel -- still the form of entertainment that requires the most engagement and conjecture on the reader's part -- coincide with a devaluation of the imagination?" Star Tribune (Minneapolis) 08/11/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 7:42 am
E-Book Demand Is High After All "More than 30 million books were downloaded in the past month as part of the World eBook Fair, a giveaway of books in electronic form. Originally intended to run July 4 to Aug. 4, the project was extended for a week because unexpected demand at the start temporarily overwhelmed computer servers." Boston Globe 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 6:41 am
What Took Günter Grass So Long? (And Why Now?) "Nobel prize-winning author Günter Grass's surprise admission that he served in the Waffen SS as a teenager has been met with sympathy from some German writers but drew harsh criticism from other prominent figures who asked why he had waited so long to own up. Some argued that, as a prominent moral voice that urged Germany to face up to the Nazi past, the 78-year-old's authority had been undermined by his silence about his months in Adolf Hitler's notorious paramilitary combat force." The Guardian (UK) 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 5:19 am
Man Booker Prize Nominees Nineteen authors have been chosen for this year's Man Booker Prize longlist. "The 19 books were chosen from 112 entries - 95 submitted and the remainder called in by the judging panel. A shortlist will be announced on 14 September, with the overall winner revealed on 10 October." BBC 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 7:30 pm
Booker List - Very Familiar "Among longlisted contenders seen as having a fair chance of reaching next month's shortlist are the veteran writer and columnist Howard Jacobson...Others are the South African Nadine Gordimer for Get a Life, Kate Grenville for The Secret River and Barry Unsworth, joint winner of the prize in 1992, for The Ruby in Her Navel." The Guardian (UK) 08/15/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 7:21 pm
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Fox Jumps Into TV, Movie Downloads Fox plans to start selling movies and TV shows for downloading. "Movies will sell for about $20 and TV shows for $1.99 an episode. Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store already sells many television shows, including "24" and others from Fox, for $1.99 apiece, but those can only be played on the company's market-leading iPod devices or through its iTunes software on a computer." Backstage 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 7:34 pm
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At Bolshoi, Swan No Longer Requires Resurrection London audiences at the Bolshoi's "Swan Lake" will witness a departure from the company's Soviet past in that "the swan actually dies. The balletomanes among you may snort indignantly that of course the swan dies, that Odette's death is integral to the story and that it is, in essence, the pivotal point of the plot. But you are not reckoning with the thought police of the old Soviet Union, or the mind processes of its Ministry of Culture, and you clearly did not see the Bolshoi production designed by the famous Yuri Grigorovich in 1969 and performed by the company until the collapse of the old order." The Guardian (UK) 08/15/06
Posted: 08/15/2006 5:28 am
Toronto Dance Fest Revisits The Hits The new Toronto International Dance Festival has been showcasing hits from the past. But "despite the 'international' in its title, the out-of-country entries in the festival have been its least attractive feature so far. Two companies from California performing in the mixed programs reminded one of the old student-danced fFIDA shows." Toronto Star 08/14/06
Posted: 08/14/2006 9:59 pm
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