The Berlin International Film Festival is all about politics this year, with “dramatized documentaries” playing alongside straight docs and other movies with a message. There is lighter fare as well, but from opening night in Berlin, it was clear that current events would be the main attraction.
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Why Can’t We Be High-Tech And Literate?
Is our reliance on new technologies weakening our grip on the English language? With e-mail, text messaging, and countless other ways to do whatever it is you do faster, “dumbing down the language is not only seen as acceptable, but is tacitly encouraged as the status quo. Any number of my acquaintances excuse the bad writing and atrocious punctuation that proliferates in e-mail by saying, in essence, ‘Well, at least people are writing again.’ Horse droppings. People have never stopped writing, although it’s reaching a point where you wish a lot of them would.”
A Matter of Choice
“When it comes to consumer choice, it’s hard to beat recordings of the popular classics. There are now around 100 different recordings of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and nearly 200 of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.” Conversely, you’re lucky if you can find even a single recording of that contemporary work your local orchestra played last weekend, and finding more than one recording of a work written after 1970? Forget it. “But now things are changing. As new music loosens up, and finds a genuine public, so the record companies are taking an interest in it.”
Olympics Lose Out To “Idol”
NBC’s broadcast of the Olympics Tuesday night got trounced by “American Idol.” “Since its opening on Friday, the Turin games have been running well below the 2002 Salt Lake City games in viewership interest. Much of that was expected, but Tuesday’s ratings was the first alarming sign for NBC that increased TV competition has taken a toll.”
A Star Gala That Goes Kitsch In The Night
The ‘Stars of the 21st Century,’ an annual gala that returned on Monday to the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center ought to offer much but delivers kitsch. “At fault is the vulgar attitude toward dancing displayed in the so-called “defilé,” where all the gala participants leap and twirl, performing stunts like animals in a circus ring. The tastelessness of this finale, which spoils the curtain calls each year, has begun to leach into the gala proper.”
Vegas Avenue Q Closing
After eschewing a national tour and opening in a special theatre in Las Vegas, Avenue Q was expected to usher in a new generation of theatre in the desert. But after only five months, and selling only 65 percent of its tickets, the show is closing. “The short-lived run of “Avenue Q” in Las Vegas will probably give pause to many Broadway producers who have seen long-running blockbusters and newly minted hits alike head to the desert chasing seemingly no-lose propositions.”
A Better UK Arts Council? How?
So UK Culture Minister David Lammy thinks Arts Council England needs reform. “We must reform the Arts Council,” Lammy said. It’s got “to slim down”, “get smarter” and prove that it is “more than a passive cash machine”. But what exactly is he trying to accomplish, asks Rupert Christiansen?
Wedding Singer – A Hit In The Making?
Hairspray was a big musical hit spawned in Seattle. Now the same company (The 5th Avenue) that birthed it is producing another musical-made-from-movie: “The Wedding Singer.” “Could The Wedding Singer be the equivalent of Pearl Jam, a second cash megacow? Despite the predictable standing ovation that greeted Thursday’s world premiere, the answer is, ‘No way’.”
Sondheim Finds New Life In Smaller Chamber Productions
“The current miniaturisation of Sondheim makes his more difficult works freshly viable. What it portends is a different kind of musical for our time – a chamber musical that can be produced without dependence on conservative theatrical owners and bankrollers, a genre that can take in everything from early Kurt Weill to the sort of work that never gets developed beyond festival fringes. It is exactly what spaces like Covent Garden’s Linbury Theatre and the South Bank’s Purcell Room were built for, not to mention downstairs at Carnegie Hall. When, I wonder, will these fusty places catch the wind?
Sweet By Nature
Trying to pass on the sweets? Recent studies show why that might be hard. “The study strongly suggests that attraction to sweets and aversion to bitters is hard wired into the brain and is therefore programmed into our genes.”