“Despite a box office that’s soared 17 percent so far this year, Hollywood’s year-long feature-film production dry spell has turned into a drought, leaving thousands of industry professionals above and below the line scrounging for work. According to IMDbPro, only 35 films are in production or have filmed in the U.S. since January, an 8.7 percent drop from last year, which was already low because of last year’s writer’s strike. And the slowdown is bad all over….”
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Updike’s Final Verse Confronts His Coming Death
“‘Endpoint and Other Poems’ is, apparently, the last book that John Updike saw through the press before his death this past January. In these pages he writes with devastating plainness about illness and old age…. If L.E. Sissman, whose witty and civilized poetry Updike admired, hadn’t already taken the title, this slender book could easily have been called: ‘Dying: An Introduction.'”
Sans Billionaires, Auction Of Russian Art Largely Tanks
“‘For the current economic climate, the results are good,’ said Natalia Kolodzei, executive director of the U.S.-based Kolodzei Art Foundation, which promotes Russian art. ‘If we saw such results a year and a half ago, it would have been a catastrophe,’ she said.”
Why Movies Are Thriving: We’re Seeing Summer Crop Now
“Hollywood is heading toward its first $10 billion year at the box office, scoring with moviegoers during the recession by pulling films from the crowded summer schedule and releasing them in theaters earlier. … The result is the fastest growth since 2002, according to Box Office Mojo, which puts this year’s gain at 14 percent.” The results “are convincing studios the first quarter has more revenue potential, and may explain why ticket sales are increasing when U.S. joblessness is at a 25- year high.”
Actors Feel The Domino Effect Of Theatres’ Cutbacks
“It’s hard to know just how many fewer jobs there will be for stage actors this year,” but of the 200 nonprofit theaters that responded to a Theatre Communications Group survey several months ago, “20 percent said they planned to shorten their seasons; 30 percent said they planned to produce plays with smaller casts. One big drawback: Actors need to work a minimum number of weeks to qualify for health insurance through their union, Actors’ Equity Association.”
August Wilson Is Back On B’way. Why’s The Director White?
“In life, the playwright August Wilson had an all-but-official rule: No white directors for major productions of his work” — a rule that’s been broken in a big way, albeit with his widow’s consent, with the selection of Tony winner Bartlett Sher to direct the Broadway revival of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone.” The choice “has prompted concern and even outrage among some black directors, who say this production represents a lost opportunity for a black director, for whom few opportunities exist on Broadway or at major regional theaters.”
Boyd’s RSC Has Turned Our Attention Back To Shakespeare
“It’s a measure of how greatly Michael Boyd has transformed the Royal Shakespeare Company’s fortunes since he took over as artistic director in April 2003 that it’s only at the end of an hour’s conversation, just as various assistants materialise to summon him back to rehearsals, that the question of the RSC’s troubled past arises, almost as an afterthought. There was a time … when ‘the problem’ of the RSC would have been the first, second and third item on the agenda.”
Literary Trail To Mark Real-World Locations From Novels
“Miranda Hill, the moving force behind Project Bookmark Canada, imagines the day when Canadians will be able to read their way from coast to coast, following a trail of plaques containing literary excerpts of some of this country’s most geographically specific works. The first step on that journey will be taken tomorrow with the inaugural Bookmark containing a passage from In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje’s iconic novel….”
British Arts Escape Worst Harm From Govt. Spending Cuts
“Not a word about culture in the Budget speech, but information about the implications on the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is dribbling through. And frankly, given the circumstances, it looks like good news. Of the £15bn in savings Darling is announcing over the following three years, a relatively small £168m is to come out of the DCMS budget over that period.”
Linda Gregg Nabs $50,000 Jackson Poetry Prize
“Poet Linda Gregg has won the third annual Jackson Poetry Prize, a $50,000 award given to an author who has written at least one book of ‘recognized literary merit,’ but has yet to receive wide attention.”