Author: Douglas McLennan

“I OFFERED TO BE PEACEMAKER”

“Barry Fischer envisioned an intimate program for a few dozen high school and college students from around the country. He imagined a place where they could take classes in the rigorous Graham technique and learn some of her repertoire. The three-week program, scheduled to start this Sunday, was to culminate with a performance of excerpts of Graham works danced by members of the Martha Graham Ensemble, a junior company.” And then came this week’s call for a boycott from unemployed Graham dancers. – Washington Post 

UN “PATRIOT”-IC

The British are protesting the gratuitous rewrite of history in “The Patriot,” but there are other reasons to worry about this movie. “Thanks to the sheer raving outrageousness of ‘The Patriot’ – which climaxes with the use of an American flag as a bayonet; which evokes Waco in a scene in which a church-full of militia sympathizers are burned alive by the British; and which peddles a right-wing agenda so outlandish it would make Rambo blush – you’d have to be a flaming, wood-paneled idiot to miss the movie’s politics.” – Toronto Star 07/14/00

BAD REVIEWS CAN RUIN YOU

  • “It has long been known that writers suffer from a much higher incidence of mood disorders, including depression and mania, than other people. The precise medical reason for this has never been adequately explained. But [an anthropologist] believes it is because writing is less a true expression of the artist’s life (except in the case of the daily diarist) than it is a form of compensation and redress for denied satisfactions.” – National Post (Canada)

SPOILING STORIES WITH IMAGES

The New Yorker has begun publishing photos of its fiction writers. Sure we’re an increasingly visual culture, and promoting the writer is all part of the package. “But there is something different about fiction, which depends for its power on our willingness to believe that it is as much about the reader’s life as it is the writer’s. Linking too readily the author’s image with the work seems to make the story more disposable. It’s just another product, just another package deal.” – Chicago Tribune

PETERSON PRIZE

Pianist Oscar Peterson has become the first Canadian recipient of the International Music Council UNESCO Music Prize. “The prize is given every year to a musician or musical institution that has contributed to the development and enrichment of music and has served peace and understanding around the world.” – CBC

CLOCKWORK AUCTION

Memorabilia from the estates of Stanley Kubrick and Laurence Olivier are being sold at auction today. Among Kubrick’s lot are draft scripts for the nuclear war satire “Dr Strangelove”. The Olivier papers include 250 letters and cards written by the actor and his family. – BBC

CULTURAL BUYBACK

Chinese artifacts have been leaked illegally to the West for years, ending up in museums and collections around the world. Now “the Shanghai Museum has been quietly buying back treasures from dealer showrooms, mainly in Hong Kong. Nearly one third of the museum’s famed collection of bronzes was acquired over the past 10 years through purchases and donations.” – South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)

BUSY SIGNAL

Scotland is testing an ambitious new plan to make “information about almost every Scottish monument, museum exhibit or work of art available via mobile phones. All the background and trivia they ever wanted to know about a particular place or object will appear on the screens of their handsets.” – BBC

FOUNDING FATHER

It’s been called Ontario’s longest-running “culture war.” A collector amassed a gallery of Group of Seven paintings and gave them to the province of Ontario in 1965. But gradually the patron was forced out of control of the collection, the gallery collected new work and became an important Canadian collection of contemporary art. Now the province’s premier wants to give control back to the patron and let him do away with the contemporary work. Critics are “going ballistic.” – The Globe and Mail (Canada)