“The Day After Tomorrow, a global-warming disaster flick due to be released this summer, has “become a lightning rod for criticism of the Bush administration’s environmental policies. The movie’s histrionics and dubious science – New York City is flooded and transformed overnight into a polar metropolis – also raise issues of scientific validity and activist filmmaking.”
Blog
Colorado’s New Direction
When the Colorado Symphony hired 47-year-old Jeffrey Kahane to succeed Marin Alsop as music director, it signaled a distinct change in the way the orchestra will present itself to the community. Alsop was a virtual unknown when she came to Denver, and as her star rose in the wider music world, the CSO’s name came along for the ride. But Kahane is no up-and-coming youngster: he’s an established name in the industry, a much-respected pianist, and an artist in the prime of his career. Those may seem like excellent reasons to hire a music director, but at a time when so many other orchestras are looking for the next big thing in conducting, Colorado seems to have made something of a safe choice.
The Bach Barfly
Matt Haimovvitz could be making his career in the great concert halls of the world, playing his cello in front of the top orchestras in the U.S. and Europe. Instead, he’s touring America, hauling his distinctly classical instrument into profoundly unclassical bars, pizza parlors, and nightclubs, and subjecting the patrons to some solo Bach. Why bother? Call it a musical answer to the question of why everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it: in an era when every classical musician talks about the necessity of breeding new audiences for the old music, Haimovitz is actually making a stab at doing it.
The Post-9/11 Musical, Written 10 Years In Advance
Stephen Sondheim’s gut-punch of a musical, Assassins, has finally made it to Broadway more than a decade after its debut, and the reception has been largely positive. But audiences have been reluctant to reward the actors with the usual standing ovation, and Frank Rich thinks he knows why. “If the old maxim has it that you should never yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater, it’s even worse to wave a gun in a crowded theater in New York City at a time when an Associated Press poll shows that two-thirds of Americans expect a terrorist attack before the election, with one-third expecting the political conventions to be a target.”
Using Sound To Create Human Puppets
Just as certain smells can make you salivate and certain visual images can inspire certain feelings, music and sound have the power to trigger specific reactions in the human brain. A biotech company is hoping to take financial advantage of that fact by “integrating neurosensory algorithms into music to create a certain mood and evoke more intense responses from listeners. The company hopes to market its compositions to the movie industry and video game companies.”
Shaw Looks For a Rebound Season
Between the SARS virus, the blackout that left a good chunk of Ontario in the dark for an entire weekend, and the American invasion of Iraq, 2003 was not a good year for the Shaw Festival and its first-year director, Jackie Maxwell. “Tourists stayed away in droves and the end result was a deficit of $3 million, of which $2.5 million was attributable to falling attendances.” The Shaw will look to rebound this summer, and Maxwell is looking to put her stamp on the festival’s artistic image after a tumultuous first year on the job.
Judge: Canadian Film Censorship Illegal
An Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled that the province’s practice of requiring all films to be submitted to a censor board for approval is illegal under Canada’s Charter of Rights & Freedoms. In his ruling, the judge said that the government had provided “no satisfactory explanation why prior approval of films to be shown to the public at large was required,” especially since similar screening processes are not required for film festivals and other “limited audience” screenings.
Picasso Could Go For $100 Mil
“A rare Picasso canvas from the painter’s Rose period could set an art-world sales record with a hammer price of as much as $100-million when it goes up for auction on Wednesday evening at a blockbuster single-owner sale at Sotheby’s in New York. The event kicks off the spring season of Impressionist and modern-art sales.”
The Genies, All Bottled Up
The Genie Awards try hard, they really do, but getting Canadians to watch a Canadian awards show focusing solely on Canadian films, when Canadians can already see the Oscars and the Golden Globes, which focus on films that Canadians actually go to in large numbers, is a difficult undertaking. So with the Genie telecast moving to a new channel this year, the organizers thought that a new host might liven things up. But can even former Kid in the Hall Scott Thompson make the Genie’s a marketable event?
Mies House Reopens In Illinois
“Four months after spending $7.5 million to buy the Farnsworth House and keep the icon of 20th Century modernism in Illinois, preservationists will open the house for tours Saturday, hoping the public will warm to the cool, steel-and-glass masterwork by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. The 53-year-old house, 58 miles southwest of Chicago, appeared to be in jeopardy until a last-minute surge of donations gave preservation groups the war chest they needed to purchase it on Dec. 12 at a Sotheby’s auction in New York. The groups had feared that a wealthy bidder might move the house out of state.”