Author: Douglas McLennan

OPERA ANGEL

Vilar’s L.A. Opera donation breaks down into two parts – $6 million will go for new productions over three years, starting in 2001. One million dollars a year over the next four years will support and expand the company’s training and coaching program for young singers. These donations come on the heels of a separate Vilar pledge to L.A. Opera of $2 million, announced by its new artistic director Placido Domingo on Monday. – Los Angeles Times

ON THE ATTACK

A long parade of lawmakers testified before the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday in response to this week’s FTC report attacking Hollywood’s marketing violent content to children. VP nominee Joseph Lieberman decried a “culture of carnage” and urged the industry to self-regulate itself, or face government intervention. – CNN 09/13/00

  • BUT WHAT IF YOU HELD A HEARING AND NOBODY CAME? Not one of the film industry executives invited to participate in Wednesday’s hearing showed up. John McCain was livid, demanding the absentees (including Michael Eisner, Rupert Murdoch, and Harvey Weinstein) show up for a follow-up hearing in two weeks. – Salon 09/14/00

  • NO, YOU’RE RUDE: Hollywood execs, meanwhile, said that Senator McCain “showed his absence of manners by inviting them Friday night to show up on short notice without ever having had time to study the report. A spokesman for one of the studios, in fact, said no invitation to appear was ever received.” – Variety 09/14/00

ARTS INSTITUTIONS CONSIDER FORMAL HIGHER EDUCATION

Arts institutions are into education big time these days. So how long before some of those programs become formalized?  Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, Field Museum of Natural History and John G. Shedd Aquarium have become so far-reaching in their educational purposes these days it would not be a stretch to see the three facilities, individually or as a consortium, become degree-conferring institutions. – Chicago Tribune 09/13/00

CENSORSHIP LIST

Harry Potter, Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye”, John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” and Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” were among the most-singled-out books adults wanted removed from American library shelves in the 1990s says the American Library Association. – Ottawa Citizen (AP)

MIAMI OUT-DAZZLES BOLSHOI, JOFFREY

The Balanchine Celebration Festival gets underway at the Kennedy Center. And surprise – “of the three companies represented on the program – the Bolshoi Ballet, Miami City Ballet and the Joffrey Ballet of Chicago – Miami got to set the exclamation points, closing each half of the evening with high-wattage show-stoppers. Its ‘Rubies’ section of the full-length ballet ‘Jewels’ was about as dazzling as one could bear.” – Washington Post

BORING!

So we’re back to being offended about violence in entertainment again. But what a a paper issue. “Some of the current sanctimony is sincere. But come on: since the 1960s, if not earlier, the cultural contradictions of capitalism have been the cultural contradictions of capitalism. Our ferociously efficient free-market system, the one bubbling along so nicely just now that Al Gore will be elected president, requires revenue maximization, which means every prospective buyer of every legal, medically safe product must be targeted. – Inside.com

WHO SHOCKS ANYMORE?

For some time now, the definition of modern art was to shock us in some way, take us aback a little. “Lately, newness—changeable by nature—has transformed itself into something harder to see, especially at first sight. Now, when people aren’t hit with a shock of the new, they think they haven’t been hit at all. When they don’t find the Next Big Thing, or find it fast enough—and this may be a contemporary definition of complacency—they blame art.” – Village Voice

DOME DEMOLITION?

Emergency plans were drawn up to tear down the beleaguered Millennium Dome and sell its land for redevelopment after the Japanese bank Nomura pulled out of talks to purchase the monument – “a humiliating end to a project once hailed by Tony Blair as a symbol of ‘British flair and genius.’” – The Guardian

  • AND FALLOUT: If the Dome closes, approximately 1,900 employees will lose their jobs, and “the ultimate victim is likely to be the New Opportunities Fund, which gives lottery money to children, the sick and ‘green’ causes.” – The Times (UK)