More colleges are producing more actors than ever and the job market is stagnating. So schools are adapting. “Instead of the pure education-of-an-artist approach that dominated in undergraduate acting programs through the 1980’s and 90’s, there is now a growing emphasis on helping students find work in a famously competitive field. The result is something of a confounding dilemma both for educators and for some professionals, who fear, on the one hand, that vocational training robs student actors of necessary artistic exploration and, on the other, that schools have to do a better job of preparing actors for the grim realities of professional life.”
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Kids Movies On Top
Kids movies are hot. Kids movies made from classic stories are right on top. “They make great gobs of money when they work. Pretty decent money even when they’re just passable. And that’s why movies that would have once been seen as kid stuff have become the toast of Tinseltown.”
Newspapers Waste Ink On TV, Pop Culture
Newspapers are in a tizzy about declining circulation. But maybe part of what’s wrong is that newspapers “drive readers away, either through clueless attempts to woo people who have no interest in newspapers at all, or by mocking community standards that most of its customers hold dear. Television and celebrity coverage is a waste. People who prefer television simply watch more television — they don’t and won’t read papers. Why chase them?”
Satellite Radio Comes To Canada
“Sirius and XM Canada, two competing U.S. services newly launched in Canada, offer a plethora of music divided by minute genre distinctions, along with talk-radio, news, sports and comedy channels. The question now is whether Canadians will find this a fascinating new world of digitally transmitted radio or, as with cable and satellite TV, a vast array of nothing.”
Greece Opens Seas To Looters?
“The Greek parliament’s unprecedented step last month to allow divers access to the once forbidden coastline has raised fears that archaeological riches preserved in an untouched world will be taken by ruthless thieves.”
Plugging Holes At The ENO
Why did the English National Opera replace its top leadership last week sithout advertising the jobs? Some are critical, but the company’s chairman defends the decisions. “He wrote that as far as the appointment last week of former executive director Loretta Tomasi as chief executive officer and former programming director John Berry as artistic director was concerned, the board ‘could either enter into an extended period of uncertainty and speculation surrounding these jobs, or confirm in post two individuals with proven artistic and managerial records who were already carrying out many of these responsibilities with full board confidence. It concluded that the latter course was in the best interests of the company’.”
Shed Wins Turner Prize
“Simon Starling is no provocateur. Nor was he a shock winner – the bookies made him the even-money favourite. But none the less, it will come as no surprise to those who regard the Turner prize with disdain that he has won £25,000 for dismantling and assembling a wooden shed.”
A Shed With A Backstory
Simon Starling’s Turner-winning shed is all about the backstory (of course). “His work was in its way the least satisfying installation in the show, mostly because his art is less about the things in the gallery than about how these objects came to be there in the first place.”
Buddy Guy – Greatest Bluesman Standing?
“The major blues album is a vanishing artifact. Along with Robert Cray and Corey Harris, Buddy Guy himself is one of the few living humans with more than one.”
Norway’s Golden Age Of Jazz
“As jazz heads into its second century as an international language, it’s in Oslo that its conversation is now at its most animated and productive. Thirty years ago, when the saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the guitarist Terje Rypdal became the first Norwegian jazz musicians to make an international impact, no one could have predicted that their country, with its population of 4.5 million, would now be enjoying such pre-eminence.”