Kevin Von Feldt’s “A Christmas Carol” at the Kodak Theatre “experienced casting and technical problems and, despite a starry lineup … ended up realizing only 18.8% of the potential box office.” Von Feldt acknowledges “that there are indeed many bills he has left partially unpaid to creditors in the wake of the show’s financial failure.” His plan for paying those bills? Produce the show again next year.
Author: Laura Collins Hughes
Benjamin Button Gets 13 Oscar Nominations
“‘Button’ nosed out its rivals Thursday morning by scoring 13 nominations for the 81st Academy Awards. Paramount-Warner Bros.’ ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ got the most noms, including best pic. Other best pic contenders are Universal’s ‘Frost/Nixon,’ Focus Features’ ‘Milk,’ the Weinstein Co.’s ‘The Reader,’ and Fox Searchlight’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire.'”
When Art Doesn’t Age Well, Does The Artist Owe The Buyer?
“Art is long and life is short, according to the old Roman saying, but sometimes art doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain. The canvas warps, the metal bends, the paper turns brown…. [I]t’s not fully clear what responsibility artists bear to their completed work, especially after it has been sold.”
New Landlord Gives SoHo’s Ohio Theater A Brief Reprieve
“The Ohio Theater, a venerable cultural landmark that has nurtured generations of theater artists, has been given a six-month reprieve at its home at 66 Wooster Street in SoHo.” The theatre had been told it had to be out by the end of this month.
At The Scene Of The Crime: The Bergen-Belsen Memorial
“Nothing about [the new Bergen-Belsen Memorial] dramatizes information for visitors the way, say, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington apparently feels it needs to. Divorced as it is from the sites of persecution, it turns relics of genocide like a Zyklon B canister and a cattle car that transported Jews to Auschwitz into props. Bergen-Belsen has the camp as evidence, or what’s left of it.”
The Inauguration Was A Ratings Winner, Too
“More than four million people watched the opening event of the inauguration on HBO on Sunday. And almost 30 percent of households in major markets watched the coverage across 14 channels on Tuesday, making Mr. Obama’s swearing-in the most-watched one in a generation.” And that’s only counting the people who watched at home, on TV.
Hobbled By Stroke, Jean-Paul Belmondo Is Back On Screen
“Jean-Paul Belmondo uses a metal crutch and drags his right leg when he walks. His upper body tilts to the left when he moves. He speaks in short sentences, sometimes slurring his words. His right arm sits lifeless by his side. But when the 75-year-old French actor with the blue-green eyes and broken nose smiles, he evokes the image of the charming gangster and cocky seducer he played in films decades ago.” Now, still marked by the stroke he suffered in 2001, he has returned to the movies.
It’s Time America Rethinks Its Approach To Infrastructure
“So much is made of the nation’s neglect of infrastructure, yet the U.S. actually is spending record sums on it. We don’t make progress because the nation fails to lay out new communities so they can be efficiently served by means other than the auto. A start would be to group people-intensive colleges and commercial centers as hubs along corridors served by transit and walkable streets.”
Bye, Mr. Steel. Dallas Opera Will Be Just Fine Without You.
In abandoning Dallas Opera for the New York City Opera, George Steel didn’t exactly leave throngs of mourners behind. “How great was the loss? Dancing in the streets exaggerates only a bit. In Dallas, any tears shed over his departure would barely fill a thimble.”
Pay-Per-View Opera, Dance On New Performing Arts Site
“Opera and ballet lovers are to be offered major productions from some of the world’s leading companies as pay-per-view internet broadcasts. Eleven shows from the new season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York will be among those streamed by Classical TV. Productions by the Bolshoi, Marinsky, Zurich Opera and Paris Opera Ballet will be broadcast live on the Classical TV website, which launches next month.”