Three Australian-made movies are currently on the Australian Top 20 box office list. So does this signal a resurgence in the Aussie film industry?
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Orange County PAC Employee Pleads Innocent To Embezzlement Charge
“An accounts receivable clerk at the Orange County Performing Arts Center has pleaded not guilty to embezzling more than $1 million from her employer since 2000.”
Colorado Ballet’s New Home Puts It In The Black
Colorado Ballet has been fighting deficits the past few years. But its move into Denver’s new Ellie Caulkins Opera House has caused a spike in ticket sales and subscriptions. The new flush of cash seems to have solved the company’s money woes for now.
The End Of The (Brief) Era Of Juke-Box Musicals?
Juke-box musicals, those shows built around the pop songs of this or that band or performer seems to be dying as a genre. “With the departure of the King from Broadway’s Palace Theater when All Shook Up closes on Sunday, it looks increasingly as if the era of the tribute musical may be coming to an end. Between them, the Beach Boys show, the Lennon show and All Shook Up have lost $30m.”
Balt Sun Architecture Critic To Sell Properties
Edward Gunts wons properties in areas of Baltimore that he writers about architecture. The Sun has determined that Edward Gunts had “no nefarious intent to use his position for personal gain and did not consciously report or write any articles to enhance the value of the properties he owns. Still, it also is clear that Gunts should not be investing in Baltimore real estate while writing about architecture here. Gunts has agreed to comply with The Sun’s requests that he sell all of his properties by a specific date and not write about those two neighborhoods until then. Gunts will remain the newspaper’s architecture critic.”
London Museum Attendance Off Since July Bombings
“It’s clearly a good time to go to galleries. Tate’s visitor numbers have dropped by up to 20% since July 7, and while that’s obviously not a good thing in itself, it does make for fantastic viewing conditions. Tate Britain at the weekend was similarly quiet, although the gorgeous new Chris Ofili installation, The Upper Room, was getting quite a lot of punters.”
UK Judge Convenes In Cuba Over Song Rights
An English court considering who owns the UK rights to some popular Cuban songs has adjourned to Havana. “The case was proceeding in London earlier this year when an attempt to hear from Cuban witnesses via a video link to Havana failed. The presiding judge, Mr Justice Lindsay, then made the decision that justice would be best served if he appointed himself special examiner, went to Cuba, and gathered evidence.”
A Challenge To France’s Mental Health
A new book says French psychologists have it all wrong. “The Livre Noir de la Psychanalyse (The Black Book of Psychoanalysis) claims French mind-healers have become ‘fossilised’ in the ‘marginal, discredited’ teachings of Sigmund Freud. The practitioners have been saved from total disgrace, claims the book, only by the complicity of the French Foreign Minister. But France’s 6,000 psychoanalysts question the book’s motivation, claiming that its authors advocate cut-price American-style therapies, of the kind that involve locking up arachnophobes with spiders.”
A Dance Too Shocking For Kids!
London’s “Royal Ballet is about to open its new season with a work about a psychopathic dance teacher who abuses, rapes and kills his pupils which has been deemed too shocking and gruesome to be performed at matinees.”
Why Are Architects Bad At Theatres?
Architects have a terrible track record when it comes to building theatre spaces. “All the interesting practitioners say the same thing about buildings: ‘Why is it that we can’t build permissive, exciting, beautiful, available theatre space? Why is it that so many of our new buildings feel corporate, overmanaged, overfinished, icily perfect and therefore alienating to a process which by its nature is exploratory and provisional?'” Time for some new thinking?