The architecture world has been profoundly generous in its response to the Asian tsunami disaster, sending large donations and offering expertise in rebuilding a good-sized chunk of several countries. But all the good will in the world doesn’t make the decision-making regarding reconstruction any easier, and many in Asia are worried that governments will approve the construction of a large number of concrete and prefab housing units just to appear to be doing something. Those on the ground say that what is really needed is “architectural acupuncture, knowing what to do where, marrying local traditions with global expertise.”
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Lloyd Webber Selling Off Some Assets
Andrew Lloyd Webber, who dominates London’s West End theatre district not only with his music but with his ownership of eleven venues, is reportedly in talks with a mystery buyer to sell off four of his theatres.
Okay, We Like Art. Anyone Know Why?
“In all the airtime and column inches devoted to discussing art – its merits, its value, its place in our lives – the big questions that lie at the heart of the debate are often too difficult or too obscure to tackle. They are, roughly speaking, these: why do we care about art? And, given that we obviously do (and that this is worldwide phenomenon that has stretched throughout history), what is it in art that we care about?”
Whatever Happened To The Public Domain?
As U.S. copyright rules have tilted ever more strictly towards the original holders, artists and filmmakers who created work under far different regulations are increasingly finding themselves out in the cold. As the limited permissions documentary filmmakers negotiated with copyright holders of news footage expire, older documentaries such as the award-winning Eyes on the Prize are having to be pulled from circulation completely.
PBS Cleaning Up Documentaries For FCC Approval
HBO has offered the free use of three recent documentaries it aired to PBS, in an effort to get the films in front of viewers who do not subscribe to premium cable/satellite channels. But PBS is an over-the-air network, making it subject to FCC regulation, and the network is planning to err on the side of caution, removing a few scattered curse words and non-sexual nude scenes in films about terrorist attacks and Nazi death camps.
Aviators, Wine, & Oversexed Suburbanites
Martin Scorsese’s Howard Hughes biopic, The Aviator, and the surprise art house hit, Sideways, were the big winners at Sunday’s Golden Globe Awards. Clint Eastwood took home the best director award for Million Dollar Baby, and Clive Owen and Natalie Portman took home supporting actor awards for Mike Nichols’ Closer. On the TV side of the ledger, ABC’s Desperate Housewives won for best comedy series, and a bizarre and edge F/X show about plastic surgeons won for best dramatic series.
London Art Fair Tries Old School Approach
The London Art Fair has undergone a bit of an identity crisis in recent years as it struggled to compete in a newly crowded marketplace where art fairs seemed to pop up like mushrooms in every available urban space. So this year, the fair is going back to basics, abandoning the flashy colors and irritating buzzwords of past years, and focusing hard on modern British art, with an eye towards attracting “collectors, not shoppers.”
All The World’s A Stage – Why Not Sing?
One of London’s most daring and admired theatrical directors is taking a hard right career turn, preparing to stage a major choral work by Michael Tippett which the composer never intended to be performed. And while Jonathan Kent may be better known for his accomplishents in non-musical theatre, his unusual body of work seems to point naturally in the direction of opera’s searing melodrama and rhythmic symmetries. In fact, it’s worth asking what took him so long to make the leap.
People Generally Like Their Fairy Tales Without Pimps
Italian opera director Giancarlo del Monaco is mounting a new production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s beloved opera Hansel & Gretel in Berlin, and the local punditocracy is up in arms over del Monaco’s decision to rework the traditional fairy tale into a brutal commentary on pedophilia, child abuse, and urban violence. “The children’s mother is a whore and their father an alcoholic. The ‘sand-man’ is a cocaine-snorting pimp, who pursues Hansel and Gretel with a video camera and hands them over to the wicked witch – the modern ‘stranger’ who could be the man down the road, the local pervert, the Catholic priest.”
Russia To Consider Returning Dresden Collections
Russian president Vladimir Putin seems to have opened the door to negotiating the return of German artwork looted by Soviet troops at the conclusion of World War II. “Putin said that an exhibition in Russia of art that has been returned to Germany, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna from Dresden’s State Art Collection, as has been proposed by Lidia Ievleva, director of the Tretyakov Gallery, could be held. Such an exhibition would create an atmosphere that could allow further progress on the matter of trophy art.”