With the addition of a new Clyfford Still Museum project, Denver’s list of cultural projects has grown large, with a half-dozen major fund-raising efforts threatening to bump into one another. The city’s mayor is unconcerned. In the city “there is an unending level of needs. Does that mean you turn away a new opportunity? No. It comes down to some form of Darwinian selection. What a community truly cherishes and values, it will support.”
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Airing The Shakespeare Debate
The debate on who wrote the Shakespeare plays has erupted at London’s Globe Theatre, where all theories are getting an airing. “For a long time, over on this side of the Atlantic at all events, to doubt that William, the man of Stratford, wrote the plays, was for a person who hoped to have a literary career in the university a very dangerous view to entertain,” he said. “It was not popular, to put it very bluntly. Very unpopular. It was felt to sort of suggest you were, to use a word, ‘unsound.’ We merely say that in the present state of knowledge, we certainly don’t think that the Stratfordians have made out their case, but we equally don’t believe that the Oxfordians have either.”
Defending History (But What About The Historians?)
A year-and-a-half after Keith Windschuttle published his book The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, the Australian academic world is “still anguishing over its impact. It is terrified of what he will do next. Windschuttle struck at the heart of the accepted view of Australian colonial history in the past 30 years – that the settler society had engaged in a pattern of conquest, dispossession and killing of the indigenous inhabitants. The facts, he said, did not stack up.”
The Set-less Movie?
Hollywood is awaiting the release of a new movie with high anticipation. It was filmed without any locations or sets, those supplied by computers. “If it becomes a hit, the implications for filmmaking are enormous. The action-filled adventure with spectacular special effects cost around £40 million – less than half the budget for a similar film made in conventional fashion. Because there were no sets to construct, it did away with the need for production designers, art directors and carpenters. It could be the most important cinematic breakthrough in years.”
Taking A Look At The Fall Broadway
Broadway’s new season is about to open. “Unlike in previous years, there’s no potential blockbuster in the wings, no “Hairspray,” “Wicked” or “The Producers” that has the town buzzing with anticipation and hope. One could say that so far it appears it may be a rather ho-hum season, but it’s still early, and over the next few months some shows will drop off, some will be deferred and, more important, others will emerge and be added to the menu.”
UK Media Discovers Ethnic Consumers
UK TV and radio stations have discovered that non-white consumers have money. “A few years ago, businesses were obsessed with the pink pound and grey pound, launching charm offensives at gay and older consumers. Now, they’ve turned their attention to ethnic minorities and the brown pound, worth £32 billion according to a recent advertising industry report. The airwaves have changed as well. At last, it seems, black consumers are being taken seriously.”
The Cure For The Over-Published World
A 100,000 new books published in a year? 120,000? 175,000? Yikes – who can keep up? And yet, gentle reader, who wants to keep up? How many books can you read in a year? How many books are actually worth reading in a year? Fear not, Chickens Little, your innate taste will save you!
The Case Of The Missing Manuscript
Author Louis De Bernières, author of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, has lost 50 pages of his next book by leaving them on a laptop computer and going to the Edinburgh festival.
Of Theatre, Film, And Reality
Many people find film easier to relate to than theatre. Theatre, for many, is too unrealistic, too tied up in its unnatural conventions. But what about a film that takes theatre at its core?
Welsh Opera Director Quits
“In a move that has shocked the opera world, the music director of the Welsh National Opera has resigned with immediate effect. At 26, the Ossetian conductor Tugan Sokhiev was the youngest musical director of a major national company anywhere in the world, except for Mikko Franck, the 25-year-old at the helm of Finnish National Opera.”