Author: Douglas McLennan

FILM FEST COMES OF AGE

The Toronto International Film festival turns 25 this year – “an event that not only has grown into one of the world’s most important film markets but also has become the prime launching pad for Oscar bait.” – New York Times

  • WHY ART FILM LIVES: Back in the 1970s it looked like big commercial Hollywood blockbusters would take over the world. Toronto was begun as an antidote to that. The festival quickly proved that “in a miraculously sustained but constantly shifting way, international cinema refuses to lie down and die. You can starve it and stomp on it with Sylvester Stallone movies, but its lifeblood keeps pumping, and it keeps growing new limbs.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

FICKLE FILMGOERS

It’s commonly believed that big film awards – an Oscar or a Palme d’Or – work wonders for a filmmaker’s career. Not so for Bruno Dumont whose “l’Humanité” took home best actor, best actress, and the Grand Jury Prize in Cannes. “Depending on who you listen to, ‘l’Humanité’ is stultifyingly boring/ hypnotically entrancing, intellectually intriguing/exploitatively hollow, etc. Some audience members have insulted Dumont; others have held his hand and wept.” – The Guardian

LAST WORDS

Poet Ted Hughes’ last work, a theatrical adaptation of Euripides’ “Alcestis,” is being staged by acclaimed director Barrie Rutter in North England. “Theatre may not be life, but it is difficult not to find elements of Hughes’s own story in this his last passionate work about grief, sacrifice and resurrection.” – The Telegraph (UK)

FIGHTING FOR CULTURE

In the you-can-rest-easier department, isn’t it nice to know that NATO is protecting our interests in culture as well as in the skies? “The aim of NATOarts is to advance the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s goals in the cultural realm. There was also a feeling that an organization such as NATO should take a more proactive role in the formation of international culture.” – New York Press

BIG MONEY GAME

When casino mogul/art collector Steve Wynn sold the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas earlier this year, he got the buyer to agree to give him right of first refusal on the sale of the hotel’s artwork. A shareholder is suing Wynn’s company, saying Wynn will be unfairly enriched by the deal to the detriment of shareholders. – Las Vegas Sun

DOME DISASTER

London’s much-hyped (and much-maligned) Millennium Dome was mired in a new crisis Tuesday as it was forced, due to poor attendance, to reveal it’s on the verge of bankruptcy and ask the government for an emergency hand-out of £47 million – the Dome’s fifth cash injection in less than a year. – The Independent (UK)

MAKING MUSEUMS FREE

There is a general feeling in the UK that entrance to museums should be free. Many already are, but those that charge a nominal admissions fee don’t do it for the money from ticket sales. They do it to exempt themselves from VAT taxes. “The system is absurd, but the problem is not intractable. A solution is now at hand.” – The Telegraph (UK)