“There is little question that digital is the future of movie exhibition. The real questions are when it will happen and who will pay for it. The major studios are gung-ho on the technology because transmitting a movie over phone lines or on discs or by satellite will save them the expense of making individual prints of their films. At $10,000 a copy, a studio spends millions to duplicate a film like “The Hulk” that opens on 3,000 to 4,000 screens. Digital imagery is ostensibly incorruptible and theoretically as vivid as photographs on film. The digital revolution was supposed to happen four years ago…”
Month: August 2003
The 70s – When Movies Were Golden (Weren’t They?)
In the past 10 years, 1970s cinema has become an unqualified cult. Directors like Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson and Spike Jonze make films under its influence; fan-boy Web sites extol its glories. Not long before she died, Pauline Kael wrote that the 1970s were ‘when the movies seemed to be about things that mattered.’ Yet, there’s something troubling about the way 1970s cinema has evolved from mere fandom to become its own genre, especially among younger cinephiles.”
Arena Shows Shrinking
The big arena pop music shows are dwindling. Rather, the number of bands that can fill an arena are shrinking. So “arenas around the country are reacting to a changing marketplace by shrinking themselves into more intimate, theater-style setups while hoping to lure the plethora of midsized acts who can only draw between 5,000 and 8,000 spectators per show.”
Read…er…Watch All About It
“As technology and programming continue to be refined, the border between artwork and interpretive information will probably blur further. All sorts of boundaries in the arts got blurred or erased beginning in the ’60s, with the rise of Pop art, Fluxus, Happenings, earthworks and other innovations. We may be witnessing the erasure of yet one more.”
Where Art Is Hot
“There is optimism and excitement in British art right now, despite its philosophical malaise. If a lot of the excitement is manufactured by editors, ad-men and PR personnel, it is also true that there is a hunger for art that amounts to something more than a trend. It’s a hunger that persists, even as the taste for art as fashion continues to be so generously indulged. If it were somehow possible to reinvest the present with a sense of duration, a historical sweep and stretch, we might be able to enjoy the shallows less guiltily, and find ourselves more frequently lost in the depths.”
Stepping Up To Support Edinburgh Fringe?
Scotland’s new culture minister says more support for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival might be on the way. He “said the Fringe was a product others would kill for and could be enhanced by strategic funding of its infrastructure. In a clear shift in the Executive’s position, Frank McAveety acknowledged an investment in the bricks and mortar of the event – its venues, accommodation and transport – was something which could be pulled together”.
Scotland To Get National Theatre?
After years of delay, it looks like the Scottish government is ready to fund a National Theatre. “This is a very significant moment in Scottish culture. There is a paradox in Scottish culture, which a national theatre can bridge. On the one hand, the Executive have been supporting events like Scotland at the Smithsonian, which took Scottish culture to America. But almost immediately afterwards, we stage these great festivals which offer no real focus. If the Executive is serious about presenting Scottish culture, it needs a champion like a national theatre.”
America-As-Idea – A Flawed Concept
The Whitney’s “American Effect” show is an idea worth exploring, on its face, writes Blake Gopnik. But there’s a fatal flaw in the working out of the idea. “Many, maybe most, of the dozens of brilliant artists working today aren’t American, and it’s hard to think of a single one of those foreigners whose art, however socially engaged, centers on ideas about America. Of course, that’s why none of those artists is in the Whitney show. The exhibition mostly features little-known foreign artists who deserve their lack of recognition.”
Lawrence Summers – Reinventing Harvard?
As president of Harvard, Lawrence Summers has a radical agenda – transforming the very nature of the way one of the world’s great universities does business. “Even if Summers were a guileful and calculating figure with a hidden agenda of drastic change, he would have a tough row to hoe. But he’s not: he’s a blunt and overbearing figure with an overt agenda of drastic change. It should come as no surprise that Larry Summers is not quite as popular a figure as his gracious predecessor was.”
Connective Tissue – Why Flash Mobs Are Interesting
Some critics have quickly tired of flash-mobs that began this summer, writing off the phenomenon as “a slightly annoying fad, the techno equivalent of streaking. Others detect a ‘social revolution’ in the offing. Flash mobs are worth paying attention to. They offer a lesson about the evolving nature of networks: from Friendster, a six-degrees-of-separation dating service, to the ‘relationship mining’ software that combs through employees’ electronic address books to identify which of their contacts might be useful to the employer. What flash mobs do is make networks tangible.”