“Canadian broadcasters that meet certain targets – which have yet to be determined, but would likely be based on TV ratings – would see their eligible funding increase each year. Those that fell short of the Hit Factor would see their dollar amount decrease.”
Month: June 2008
Tipping Point? Musicians Find Life Better Away From Major Recording Labels
“Acts with large audiences and established brands like Radiohead, Madonna and the Eagles no longer need the labels’ star-making clout. They have calculated that they can do better, and have more options, outside the old system.”
A Way To Make Shakespeare Profitable
“The limited run on Broadway wasn’t a preordained hit. About 20,000 people saw the show at the Brooklyn Academy of Music before the transfer. Laced with video imagery, Soviet-style military costumes and blood, it originated at the Chichester Festival Theatre in West Sussex, south of London. The cast was almost entirely British, and the move to Broadway required a waiver from Actors’ Equity.”
Dance – Taking It To The Streets (And TV, And…)
“It seems as if every channel worth its programming salt, from broadcast networks to TLC, Lifetime and Bravo, has trotted out a dance-based reality show. As an unexpected side effect, street dance is now being popularized through television and on the shows’ Web sites, and newer moves are being documented and codified in a way not seen before.”
The High-Functioning Of Oskar Eustis’ Public Theatre
“The thesis in hiring me has to be that we can make a stable organization that is just as risky and cutting edge artistically as it’s always been. You don’t need a chaotic organization in order to produce cutting-edge, experimental, daring, dangerous work.”
Reinventing The Idea Of Cities
“In both China and the Persian Gulf, cities comparable in size to New York have sprouted up almost overnight. Built at phenomenal speeds, these generic or instant cities, as they have been called, have no recognizable center, no single identity. It is sometimes hard to think of them as cities at all.”
Computer Games You Control With Thoughts
“A new headset system picks up electrical activity from the brain, as well as from facial muscles and other spots, and translates it into on-screen commands. This lets players vanquish villains not with a click, but with a thought.”
MGM – A Studio That Used To Be (And Now?)
“Despite its enduring legacy as one of Hollywood’s most legendary movie studios — and a seemingly stubborn refusal to disappear — MGM hasn’t fit the profile of a full-fledged production company in years.”
Our Cities The Way We Imagined Them In Movies
“For much of the past century, the job of imagining the worst possible outcomes of their good intentions — of assessing the radically dystopian implications of urban progress — has fallen to film directors and production designers. They invent the city of the future not as a model but as a cautionary tale; and their future is the only future we know firsthand.”
Is LA’s Signature Building Being Allowed To Decay?
LA’s Disney Concert Hall is five years old and thriving, and the LA Philharmonic has significantly boosted its profile as a result. “But while the Music Center is aglow over Disney Hall, it shows no pleasure writing checks. Anything the center can do on the cheap, it does. Disney is not well cared for.”