The Houston Symphony finished its 2003-04 season with an $880,000 deficit, much smaller than predicted. “A strike by musicians in March 2003, the first in the organization’s 90-year history helped the orchestra end the 2002-03 season with a $3.6 million deficit. But the strike settlement allowed the symphony’s board to implement a five-year plan to get balanced budgets on a regular basis and pay off its accumulated deficit by 2008.”
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Booming UK Film Industry Could Bust
The UK film industry has been operating at record levels. “During 2003 the industry boasted record levels of production spending, with £1.16bn spent making 173 features in, or involving, the UK. And the industry now employs 57,429 people – a whopping 77% increase in the past 10 years.” But some are warning that this boom could bust, like many booms before…
The Artist Beyond The Success
Artists like success of course. “But what about being trapped by success? Being widely admired and richly rewarded for something you do, but secretly wishing to do something entirely different?” A surprising number of artists harbor ambitions beyond their renown…
NYT, LAT Duke It Out For Movie Coverage
The New York Times is investing heavily in beefing up its reporting of the entertainment business. That’s causing the LA Times to guard its turf. “Beneath the vaingloriousness of any caged match between media rivals lies the reality of their motives for fighting in the first place. And so the question has to be asked: Isn’t pouring all this money and militia into something as ultimately silly as show-biz coverage demeaning to both papers when there’s real news not being covered?”
Wanted: A New Movie Critic For Chicago
The Chicago Tribune is looking for a new movie critic. It’d help if you’re a woman, reports the Chicago Reader. “Coverage of major film festivals is a key part of the job, as is writing larger expository pieces on developments in the industry. . . . This critic’s reviews should appeal to readers as great pieces of writing, beyond their crucial function in guiding readers’ moviegoing decisions.”
Turning Around The Bolshoi
“The years following the collapse of the Soviet Union were not kind to the estimable Moscow theatre, particularly its opera wing. Short of funds and lacking the kind of dynamic leadership Valery Gergiev brought to the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the Bolshoi often seemed to be going through the motions.” But in the past few years the Bolshoi has undergone a dramatic transformation…
A Saga Of Movie-Making Hell
The making of an “Exorcist” prequel has been an extraordinary saga, involving “a series of wayward turns that had plagued ‘The Beginning’ since the beginning — a web of movie making, unmaking and remaking so infernally tangled as to give new meaning to the phrase ‘development hell’.”
This Summer’s Movies – Skewing Older
This summer’s story at the movies has been adults. As in movies made for adults. “Beneath the marketing hype luring young filmgoers to the latest blockbuster, Hollywood is quietly targeting older audiences with a surprisingly broad array of movies.”
ID’ing Your Handwriting
Okay, so handwriing analysis has a bit of a hinky reputation (can you really tell I have problems with my mother by the way I cross my T’s?) But a new method promises accurate interpretation of handwriting. “Their method employs holography. This technique makes three-dimensional images from the interference patterns of two laser beams used to scan an object—in this case a sample of handwriting. When the holographic information in an image is transferred to a computer, that image can be interpreted as a series of troughs of varying depths, denoting the pressure of the pen strokes used to make them.”
“Celebrating” The Infomercial’s 20th Birthday
“This year is the 20th anniversary of those ubiquitous 28-minute feature-length TV ads, better known as infomercials. Every year, men and mostly women shell out more than a billion dollars buying up stain eliminators, hair removers, veggie choppers, fat reducers and more. If you include short-form spot ads that drive people to stores searching for “As Seen on TV” products, gross revenue for such infomercials rose to $154.1 billion last year. That’s almost an 81 percent jump in just six years. Combine TV, radio and Internet retailing, and it’s a staggering $256 billion industry.”