“Argentina is home to the most exciting filmmaking in the world at the moment – and certainly, with the possible exception of South Korea, it is the core site of fresh work by women directors – if the country itself and the new voices emerging from it weren’t so disparate, drawing from European and American influences as well as the history of a Latin American country second only to Brazil in terms of film production. This achievement is amazing, considering the country’s new wave has risen from – and crashed against – economic ruin.”
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Movie Moguls And Their Outrageous Percs
Shocked by the salaries and percs that big Hollywood stars demand and get? Oh come now. The really outrageous feeding at the trough of greed is done by entertainment company execs whose philosophy seems to be ‘why spend a dollar when you can spend a million?’
Education Fails Classical Music
Peter Maxwell Davies says what ails classical music is the lack of good education. “Successive governments have cut back on music education in state schools to the extent that music specialists have become a rarity. Not only can few teachers read or write musical notation, but the music teachers themselves are unfamiliar with the world of classical music. Can we imagine the teaching of English in circumstances where the teacher not only does not know any poems, novels or plays, but cannot read?”
Hollywood’s Theatre Drain
“Since the beginning of this year, four of Hollywood’s best and most established small-theaters companies — Open Fist, the Actors’ Gang, West Coast Ensemble and Theatre/Theater — have either been evicted or are considering leaving the Hollywood area due to redevelopment and rising property values. All have resided in Hollywood for years, establishing themselves in marginal neighborhoods. ‘Lip service is paid to the importance of theater and the theater community and yet there’s so little public support and certainly no public assistance’.”
Where Does British Art Stack Up?
“British art, historically, has its charms. In addition to Gainsborough’s perfumed rococo world, we have Constable and Turner. All three, if you have grown up with the swagging, blustering variability of British weather, are acute barometers of the national soul. But do their works make it into the world’s top 10, or even top 100?”
2005 PEN Awards
“An American librarian, an imprisoned Saudi Arabian writer, a Turkish book publisher and a Gambian newspaper editor who was fatally shot last year were honored at the 2005 PEN Montblanc Literary Gala.”
Is Video The Next Big Internet Search?
Before video really takes off on the internet there will have to be a way to find the video you want. “In recent weeks, Yahoo, Google and MSN have each rolled out services designed to make it easier to upload or locate video online. The portals’ rollouts come as a handful of startups and independent film sites are creating tools to make putting video online nearly as simple as publishing text.”
Chicago’s Dueling Art Fairs
“Chicago will be the site of not one but two big international contemporary art fairs starting their simultaneous four-day public runs on Friday. But out of sight at both will be three of this city’s more prominent, high-end contemporary art dealers.”
Fun Rules In New Broadway Hits
“The juggernaut shows are no longer based on teary epics or lugubrious legends or dark poems. The singing gloom-and-doom characters of the Great White Way — the bedraggled street urchins and guilt-ridden Vietnam War veterans and weather-beaten felines — have packed up their dressing rooms. One formidable survivor, that spectral opera-house haunter in the half-mask, is looking ever lonelier. Today, the hits are all about tee-hee and ha-ha and oh-ho-ho. What packs ’em in is hilarity in major chords. Monty Python, Mel Brooks, sex-crazed puppets, Harvey Fierstein in a triple-D cup: These are the new aristocrats of Broadway. Types with a thing for the funny bone.”
Self-Publishing Finds Its Legs
“For the first time, print-on-demand companies are successfully positioning themselves as respectable alternatives to mainstream publishing and erasing the stigma of the old-fashioned vanity press. Some even make a case that they give authors an advantage — from total control over the design, editing and publicity to a bigger share of the profits.”