It’s now been a few days since the hotly anticipated premiere, and Jonathan Gibbs says it’s time to ask the question that everyone at Cannes is asking: has anyone given The DaVinci Code a good review?
Blog
Bush’s America, Through British Eyes
Imagine you’re a Briton spending a few years in America, starting somewhere around the beginning of 2003. Two years removed from the 9/11 attacks, and a few months shy of the invasion of Iraq, how did America look to an outsider? “I have always found America exciting; but, for better or worse, never exceptional. Its efforts at global domination seemed like a plot development in the narrative of European empire rather than a break from it… The fact that it is a big country, which, like any complicated and interesting place, is full of contradictions, is axiomatic. But it is rare to see a political culture and counter-culture so enmeshed, confused and evenly balanced (in numerical terms, at least) that it is impossible to tell which is which.”
Russia’s 9/11 May Become A Movie
Universal Pictures and producer Brian Grazer have purchased the film rights to a magazine article documenting the tragic terrorist attack on a schoolhouse in the tiny town of Beslan, Russia in September 2004. “The article, entitled The School, was written by Chris Chivers of the New York Times. Chivers covered the September 2004 siege during which 331 people, most of them schoolchildren, died when the three-day standoff in southern Russia ended in a bloody and chaotic gunfight.”
Controversy Strikes Cannes (No DaVinci Connection Found)
“Political rows erupted at the Cannes film festival yesterday as censors in Beijing rejected for domestic screening a Chinese film in competition for the Palme d’Or, and Ken Loach, the director of The Wind that Shakes the Barley, launched an attack on the British government’s recent actions in Iraq.”
Nashville Ballet Gets New Chief
Nashville Ballet has hired its own former marketing director to be its new executive director. Andrea Dillenburg worked for the company in the late 1990s, has most recently been working for the Atlanta Symphony, will succeed Paul Kaine at the helm of Nashville Ballet.
Ironically Enough, He Was Busted By The FBI
“A Hollywood producer who claimed he was creating a TV show about the Department of Homeland Security pleaded guilty on Tuesday to swindling dozens of investors out of millions of dollars. Joseph Medawar, 44, spent much of the $3.4 million he raised from about 50 people on luxury cars and a Beverly Hills mansion for himself and the woman billed as the future star of the show DHS, according to court papers.”
Hockney Auction Could Set Record
“Another art market world record is expected to be broken when one of David Hockney’s most significant works comes to auction. Sotheby’s yesterday announced it will sell The Splash, painted in 1966, with an estimate of£2.2m-£3m. That should easily beat the world record set for a Hockney last week when A Neat Lawn went for £1.9m in New York.”
Joe Volpe, In His Own Words
The Legend of Joseph Volpe is well known to anyone with even a casual interest in New York’s Metropolitan Opera, thanks in no small part to Volpe’s own “grandiose self-aggrandizement.” And as the Met prepares to say goodbye to its outsized general director this weekend, Volpe’s own memoir of his time at the helm has just been released. And as you might imagine, a lot of ears are burning in the opera world…
Charleston Musicians To Get Back Their Full Salary (Of $20,000)
The musicians of the Charleston Symphony have a new one-year contract, and will see their salaries return to 2003 levels, when the orchestra accepted a 17% cut to prevent the orchestra from going bankrupt. “Under the proposed contract, an average section player would earn $20,903 and average principal player would earn $26,128 in the 2006-07 season, Girault said. The 46 core CSO musicians perform more than 100 concerts from mid-September to mid-June.”
Venture Capital + Literature = …Um, We’ll See
“The Literary Ventures Fund is a tiny nonprofit, founded last year with offices in Boston and New York, that ‘seeks to challenge the status quo of literary publishing,’ as its Web site boldly proclaims. LVF hopes to help exceptional works of fiction, literary nonfiction and poetry find the readership they deserve — by using an economic model more frequently associated with Silicon Valley.”