In the BBC’s list of the 100 greatest movie comedies, the French would not go for Woody Allen, the Americas pulled for Airplane!, Eastern Europe liked Dr. Strangelove as much as the U.S. did, East Asia preferred silent movies, and Bollywood comedy didn’t translate beyond the Subcontinent.
Author: Matthew Westphal
The Gargoyles And Arches Of Nôtre-Dame Are Crumbling, And They Need €100 Million To Save Them
“Each year up to 14 million people visit the 12th-century Paris landmark on an island in the Seine river. Building began about 850 years ago, but pollution and the passing of time have chipped off large chunks of stone.” Says the chief fundraiser for the repair project, “If we don’t do these restoration works, we’ll risk seeing parts of the exterior structure begin to fall. This is a very serious risk.”
Houston Ballet Cancels Its Season-Opening Program
“Company officials said they will try to reschedule ‘Poetry in Motion’ for a later date, but for now they just hope to begin the season with the planned premiere of Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s story ballet Mayerling on Sept. 21. As with so many other things across the devastated city this week, that will have to be a wait-and-see matter. The plan depends on the availability of the storm-damaged Wortham [Theater Center], whose basement floors and main stage flooded.”
Bernard Pomerance, 76, Playwright Of ‘The Elephant Man’
“Pomerance wrote The Elephant Man for his theater company, Foco Novo, and it became one of the most successful plays to ever come out of London. Set in the Victorian era, it opened in April 1979 on Broadway at the Booth Theatre and went on to play 916 performances and capture the Tony Award for best play.”
In DC, Newseum Loses Its CEO And Considers Selling Its Building
“Jeffrey Herbst, president and chief executive of the Newseum, stepped down suddenly on Monday as the museum’ board announced a full-blown review of its long-troubled finances. The review could result in the sale of [its] landmark building on Pennsylvania Avenue,” to which it moved in 2008.
The Ideological Battle Dividing The World Is Perfectly Illustrated By The Fight Over Poland’s New World War II Museum
The museum in Gdańsk had become a political football well before it opened earlier this year. “On one side, you have the universalists, armed with their globalism, liberalism, and concerns for human rights. On the other, you have the nationalists, wielding their exceptionalism, isolationism, and often conservative religious values. These two narratives clash as they try to define polarized nations and their place in the world.”
Utah Museum Of Fine Arts Reopens After 19-Month Renovation And ‘Reimagining’
The physical plant and climate control have been fixed up, the galleries have been reconfigured, and even the labels and wall text have been rethought.
Repertory Theatre Of St. Louis’s Artistic Director To Step Down After Three Decades
“The sixth artistic director at the Rep, [Steven] Woolf, has held the position longer than anyone else. In that time, he came to represent the face of the theater – or at least, its colorful sweater. Thanks to radio commercials for new productions, he came to represent its voice as well.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 08.29.17
New York Festival of Song on a day of wine and roses
The New York Festival of Song is one of those distinctively urban pleasures: Its season is a series of hand-crafted programs often mixing European art song with great American popular music, pairing the right singer with the right music in exactly the right sequence. But I had to re-acquaint myself with NYFOS in the village of Orient on the far North Fork of Long Island after missing it for many years. … read more
AJBlog: Condemned to Music Published 2017-08-29
What’s In A Name: Cuneiform
Curious about the name of a small, imaginative jazz record company named Cuneiform, I asked Joyce Feigenbaum, the company’s publicist, who is married to the owner, how the label’s name came about. … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2017-08-29
Why The Booker Prize Is Bad For Literature
“There are at least two reasons why almost every anglophone novelist feels compelled to get as near the Booker Prize as they can. The first is because it looms over them and follows them around in the way Guy de Maupassant said the Eiffel Tower follows you everywhere when you’re in Paris.” Even so, writes Amit Chaudhuri, “I’m not saying that the Booker shouldn’t exist. I’m saying that it requires an alternative, and the alternative isn’t another prize.”