It might be the ultimate low-budget film, but Jonathan Caouette’s new documentary, Tarnation, cobbled together from footage Caouette shot over 21 years and edited on the filmmaker’s computer at a cost of only $218, has become the hit of this year’s festival circuit. “He describes the film as a ‘love letter’ to his mother, who developed a host of mental illnesses after being given electric shock therapy from the age of 16 to 25… As much as it is a record of that catastrophic decision made by his grandparents, Tarnation is about an astonishingly creative boy growing up gay in Houston, dealing with the legacy of that pain.”
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Reinventing The Bolshoi, Subtly
Many dance aficianados view Moscow’s Bolshoi Ballet as the gold standard by which all other companies must be judged. But even legends have to work to keep ahead of the pack, and the Bolshoi has been through some trying times in recent years as it tries to find its way through a world in which dance is evolving faster than ever, and “straight” ballet often gets short shrift. “Alexei Ratmansky is the latest artistic director to face the company’s basic quandary: how to introduce new work yet preserve the signature style and heritage of what Muscovites consider a national theater.”
China Invests In Assembly-Line Art
“China’s low wages and hunger for exports have already changed many industries, from furniture to underwear. The art world, at least art for the masses, seems to be next, and is emerging as a miniature case study of China’s successful expansion in a long list of small and obscure industries that when taken together represent a sizable chunk of economic activity. China is rapidly expanding art colleges, turning out tens of thousands of skilled artists each year willing to work cheaply. The Internet is allowing these assembly-line paintings to be sold all over the world; the same technology allows families across America to arrange for their portraits to be painted in coastal China.”
Getting Past The Pain
How has the pop music world responded to the horrific terrorist attacks in London? Well, it hasn’t, really, at least not beyond the predictable canceling and rescheduling of concerts. But isn’t pop’s refusal to be kept down by world events part of its purpose? “For all the high moral ground staked out at Live8, sometimes pop has to do exactly what it says on the tin and add a little fizz to our lives. In the wake of tragedy, Charlotte Church singing about being a Crazy Chick can seem at best an irrelevance, at worst a trivial distraction, but people don’t just listen to music to salve their souls and ease their consciences. Pop is there to raise a smile, to give us something to dance to, to help people forget their troubles.”
Water Music, With A Twist of Tragedy
Composers draw inspiration from any number of sources, but current events are usually not terribly high on the list. But for Michael Berkeley, whose new Concerto for Orchestra will get its world premiere at the BBC Proms next week, news of the tsunami devastation in southeast Asia in December 2004 changed the course of his work and led him to embrace a muse many composers – particularly Britons – have turned to over the centuries: namely, the sea.
Proms ’05: Still The Biggest, Still One Of The Best
All carping and nitpicking aside, there really is nothing like the BBC Proms, the 111th edition of which begins this weekend in London. “There is something about the buzz of the atmosphere, the camaraderie of the Albert Hall, and the potent musical mix that ineluctably attracts seasoned, occasional and first-time concert-goers alike… While other European musical capitals largely shut up shop during the summer, London stages the world’s busiest two-month classical festival, this year with 74 concerts, eight lunchtime chamber recitals, and the popular last night’s Proms in the Park presented simultaneously in London, Belfast, Glasgow, Manchester and Swansea.”
Harry Potter & The Unprecedented Marketing Blitz
How popular is Harry Potter? The sixth book in the series is expected to sell more than 2 million copies in Britain alone in the first 24 hours it is on sale. Ten million copies have been earmarked for the U.S. market, and eventual sales numbers could eclipse even those of previous volumes in the series. In order to achieve all this, of course, the marketers are working overtime, as they have before the release of each of the books.
Fringe Impresario Dies In London
London theatre legend Dan Crawford, who turned a popular pub into one of the UK’s leading venues for fringe theatre, has died of cancer, aged 62. “The hand-to-mouth existence of the King’s Head, which Crawford founded with his second wife, Joan, in 1970 was part of its charm. Its £60,000 Arts Council grant was cut in 1984 and the place was sustained by Crawford and his third wife, film-maker Stephanie Sinclaire, on minor grants and donations. Meals of variable quality were served before the show. Backstage conditions, said Sheridan Morley – who was involved in several of its productions – made the Black Hole of Calcutta resemble a five-star hotel. Crawford’s programme was a glorious mixture.”
Cooperation Saves Brit Gold Collection
A coalition of British museums has banded together to preserve one of the country’s finest collections of silver and gold plate which would otherwise have been broken up and sold at auction. “The nine museums, including the V&A, the British Museum and the Ashmolean in Oxford, pooled their resources and secured hefty grants, including over £850,000 given by the National Heritage Memorial Fund to celebrate its silver anniversary, and over £400,000 from the Art Fund charity. The collection was built up by the financier Ernest Cassel, who was born into a poor Jewish family in Germany in 1852, arrived in Liverpool in 1869 with a violin and a small bundle of clothes, and by the time of his death in 1921 was one of the richest men in Europe.”
But Isn’t It Supposed To Be Fantasy?
Harry Potter has seemingly become one of those cultural touchstones that is immune to criticism. Not that there aren’t Harry-haters – there are, but they generally get chalked up as curmudgeons out to ruin everyone else’s innocent good time. But Robert Winder has serious concerns about the craze, and they aren’t just literary. For one thing, the “crass commercialism” of the series has become suffocating. For another, is it really wise to be giving kids one more portrait of the modern world as a place where good and evil are clearly defined, when all our energies are engaged in trying to make sense of a world dominated by gray areas?