“[I]n 1895 when a 21-year-old named Alice Guy proposed using cinema to capture more than parades and trains, her boss indulgently called it ‘a young girl’s thing.’ … [T]hat girl became the first director and head of production at the French studio Gaumont and an early entrepreneur in the American movie industry.”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Fidelity To The Composer’s Score: Required Or Optional?
“The score is really a blueprint for our creative talents and, consequently, our interpretive options abound,” Byron Janis writes. “We interpret not only the music but the verbal directions the composer has given us. No score will tell you how to play allegro (quickly)–there are a lot of different ‘quicklies’ to go around.”
Los Angeles Needs A Film Commission
The city of Los Angeles “can’t afford to neglect the looming crisis that’s been building for more than a decade in the film and TV industry. The studios, of course, always whine about their problems…. For Los Angeles, however, the problem is not the industry’s distress but its success.”
3-D TV: Coming Soon To A Living Room Near You?
“A full-fledged 3-D television turf war is brewing in the United States, as manufacturers unveil sets capable of 3-D and cable programmers rush to create new channels for them. Many people are skeptical that consumers will suddenly pull their LCD and plasma televisions off the wall.”
Arrested In Theatre Director’s Death, Suspect Knew Victim
“Los Angeles police detectives have arrested a man in connection with the slaying of Bennett Bradley, a longtime director and producer at the Fountain Theatre in Hollywood. … Police had initially suggested that Bradley was the possible target of a robbery.”
Smithsonian Visits Exceed 30M For First Time Since 9/11
“A draft report the museum complex released Tuesday shows visits to the Smithsonian’s 18 museums, galleries and the National Zoo increased about 19.4 percent in 2009, up from about 25.15 million visits in 2008.”
City Of L.A., An Arts Tightwad, Looks Set To Get Tighter
“Notwithstanding [Los Angeles Mayor Antonio] Villaraigosa’s hopes of moving in ‘the other direction,’ it appears that the flow of money from the municipal treasury to the city’s $9.6-million-a-year Department of Cultural Affairs will continue to ebb.” The “city government spent $7.99 per capita on the arts in 2009, compared with New York’s $18.52.”
Ontario Arts Orgs, Audiences To Be Socked With 8% Tax
“The new 13 per cent harmonized sales tax, scheduled to start July 1, will mean the end of an exemption through which performing arts companies with fewer than 3,200 seats have avoided charging audiences 8 per cent provincial sales tax (PST). …[I]t’s a cost many companies operating on tight budgets can’t afford to absorb.”
For Lovers Of Opera Singing, It’s A Good Time To Be Alive
“It’s a golden age of deep repertoire exploration and high-velocity coloratura – singers who put out more notes per second than nearly anybody in recorded memory. … Making matters more fun: Fans don’t have to invent artistic rivalries. The singers are doing that themselves.”
A New Computer Method To Spot Art Fakes?
“The approach, known as ‘sparse coding’, builds a virtual library of an artist’s works and breaks them down into the simplest possible visual elements. Verifiable works by that artist can be rebuilt using varying proportions of those simple elements, while imitators’ works cannot.”