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Whatever Happened To The Two-Shot?

The rules that the Bush and Kerry campaigns attempted to impose on news networks covering their debates may have made for a good laugh at the politicians’ expense, but David Thomson says that the participants’ aversion to reaction shots can be lumped in with the movie and television industry’s move away from “two-shots” and other camera angles designed to emphasize the space around individuals. These days, it seems like close-ups are the only thing anyone cares about. “There was once a set of theories on film direction, or mise en scène, that attested to the aesthetics and the ethics of using spatial relationships in movies.”

Britten’s Family Values

Benjamin Britten lived his entire life obsessed with the concept of family, and was known for creating surrogate units around himself wherever he went. “There were families that Britten devised and then depended on to facilitate and fulfil his work: the companies that staged his works, and in particular the managements of the English Opera Group and the Aldeburgh festival. But there were many times in the later 1940s and 1950s when the conduct of these surrogate families was overshadowed by frustrations, jealousies and even thinly disguised homophobia.”

The Cult of the First Edition

“What persuades anyone to part with more than two million dollars for a long roll of teletype paper covered in the scribbled script that would one day become On The Road? How can any old book be worth nearly half-a-million dollars when the same thing brand spanking new is sitting on the paperback classics shelf for less than $30?” Still, someone is clearly fueling the markups, and first editions remain one of the most cherished of literary collector’s items.

How To Run A Concert Venue: Don’t Rely On Ticket Sales

St. Paul’s Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, which is the main home to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the secondary concert site of the Minnesota Orchestra, has balanced its books for the second year running, after years of red ink. “The Ordway embarked on an austerity program and stepped up its fund-raising efforts for the 2002-’03 fiscal year, raising $3.6 million. The theater nearly matched that figure this year… as the Ordway seeks to decrease its dependence on box office revenues.”

Piano’s New Music Box

“It is doubtlessly an intimidating challenge to improve the architecture of Rome, but leading Italian architect Renzo Piano may have done just that with his design of the city’s new Parco della Musica. This new music complex, almost a decade in planning and construction, not only provides Rome with attractive new musical venues, but also acts as a large-scale infill project by returning a previously underused site to the city’s urban fabric.”

Scottish Opera Goes Begging

Desperately searching for ways to stay afloat financially, Scottish Opera, which will be forced by the Scottish Executive to go dark for a year in summer 2005, is considering mounting a tour outside of Scotland to be paid for by England’s Arts Council. “There is concern that if the opera drops out of sight, the road back will be even tougher. Staging a brand-new opera in Scotland, however, could potentially cost up to £400,000.” So if there is a tour, Scottish audiences may miss out on seeing their own opera company.

Following The Leader

The UK’s music industry trade group is preparing to file lawsuits against 28 illegal file-traders, in a mimic of the anti-piracy tactic that has been used effectively by industry groups in Europe and the US. The European group will soon be suing a new group of nearly 500 file-swappers; the US recording companies have sued nearly 6,000.

Nobel Winner Known For Reinventing Dialogue

Nobel Prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek is an artist of many varying stripes, and it may have been that self-contained diversity that attracted the Nobel Academy to her in the first place. “In her dramatic works, the academy noted, Ms. Jelinek ‘successively abandoned traditional dialogues for a kind of polyphonic monologues that do not serve to delineate roles but to permit voices from various levels of the psyche and history to be heard simultaneously.’ She may be the first Nobel laureate in literature to have made a significant commitment to the Internet, frequently posting commentary on her own web site.”

Is The Nobel Following A Pattern?

It’s become almost a tradition for the Nobel literature recipient to be someone who wasn’t even on the critical radar screen at the moment, and so it is with Elfriede Jelinek. And yet, “Ms. Jelinek fits a more familiar pattern. She is the seventh European literature laureate in the past decade. The academy has also again shown a preference for literature with a political echo. As with several recent winners, including last year’s, J. M. Coetzee, a critic of South Africa’s apartheid government, Ms. Jelinek has used her literary work as a form of political engagement.”