“Over the course of her remarkable 35-year career she has transformed herself into hundreds of different personas: the movie star, the valley girl, the angry housewife, the frustrated socialite, the Renaissance courtesan, the menacing clown, even the Roman god Bacchus. … ‘None of the characters are me,’ she explained … They’re everything but me.”
Month: February 2012
Christopher Wheeldon To Create New Cinderella
The new full-length version of the fairy tale is a co-commission of the Dutch National Ballet, where it will premiere this December, and San Francisco Ballet, which will present the work in 2013.
UK Musicians Demand Airlines Standardize Rules For Transporting Instruments
“British musicians are calling for a consistent policy on carrying instruments on planes across airlines, after a similar bill was passed in the US. … The Musicians’ Union is asking the British government to standardise requirements because ‘musicians regularly have problems taking their instruments on planes due to inconsistent policies from airlines and extortionate fees’.”
Bourne Identity Director Is Crowd-Sourcing Documentary On Torture
In a collaboration with PEN American Center and the ACLU, Doug Liman “will create a feature-length film whose script is compiled from various documents on prisoner abuse and torture [during the Bush administration’s War on Terror] … and whose footage will consist of user-submitted videos of their readings of these documents.”
Wikipedia, Truth, Verifiability And ‘Undue Weight’
Historian Timothy Messer-Kruse found a serious error of fact in a Wikipedia article on his particular locus of research. He corrected the error, with citations to the primary sources he’d studied, and his changes were undone within minutes. That was just the beginning …
Should We Just Do Away With Black History Month?
Documentary filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman (yes, he’s African-American) suggests that Black History Month is “a double-edged sword that ghettoizes black stories into the shortest month of the year and discourages further attention on them in the remaining months.”
Marina Abramovic To Create Performance Art Museum
“Marina Abramovic signed a deal with architect Rem Koolhaas earlier this week to design and construct her Center for the Preservation of Performance Art in Hudson, New York. … and the museum will be devoted to performance art pieces of ‘six hours minimum.’ Some of them will go on for days.”
The Joy Of A Great, Big, Expertly Seasoned, Scenery-Chewing Ham
Charles Isherwood on Kevin Spacey as Richard III: “So while there is nary an understated note struck in the performance, those three-plus hours flew by mighty quickly. I can’t say I entirely respected Mr. Spacey’s endlessly ingratiating performance, but I definitely enjoyed it, as you enjoy indulging in something that you know is bad for you but cannot resist.”
A Need For Curators to Run Museums…
Who will “succeed the 60 or so Âdirectors planning to retire by 2019? Instead of candidates steeped in the ethos of museums, the top jobs would increasingly go to people drawn from the business world.”
UK Music Recording Revenue Down In 2011
“UK music industry revenue fell just 3.4% last year to £795m as the steady decline in the popularity of CDs was offset by a 25% increase in income from digital downloads and subscription services such as Spotify and Napster.”