The Manhattan Theatre Club has had a terrible season “marked by backstage strife, artistic feuds and very public cast defections. The season’s woes have also highlighted complaints from upset subscribers and upset artists.”
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When Harry Met Sally In The Theatre
Why does anyone see the need to take a perfectly delightful movie – When Harry Met Sally – and turn it into stage play? “Why take a quintessentially 80s-America, middle-class masterpiece, a diffidently murmured poem to interpersonal navel-gazing, played out in close-up and tight two-shots, and whack it on one of the biggest stages the 21st-century West End has to offer? Why? Why?”
Papp Spirit Looms Over Public
George Wolfe’s resignation from the Public Theatre brings up nostalgia for the theatre’s founding director Joseph Papp. “On one hand, it’s only natural that the Public’s founding spirit should loom large at a time when the institution is searching for its next leader. On the other, it’s a sign of the trepidation many in the industry feel about the uncertain course of America’s flagship theater when corporatizing trends are buffeting even Off-Broadway.”
Miles: Passion Is A Story Made For Hollywood
As one of the few people in the world who speaks and understands Aramaic, Latin, and Hebrew, Jack Miles belongs to “the over-educated sliver of the audience for “The Passion” that can hear both “original” languages with a measure of comprehension.” Of course there are historical inaccuracies. But “time will tell whether this film will have any longer a life or any deeper an impact than its predecessors in the genre, all of which seem faded or eccentric failures in retrospect. The plot of the Gospel—good, beautiful man confronts evil, ugly establishment, loses everything, but then miraculously wins everything back in the end—is Christianity’s supreme gift to Hollywood.”
Group Recommends Doing Away With BBC License Fee
A group advising the UK Conservative Party recommends that the government do away with the BBC’s license fee and the corporation’s board of directors. “The BBC is overwhelmingly funded by the £2.3bn a year it receives from TV households paying the licence fee, which the group says is at the root of the BBC’s problems.”
“Gray” Tuesday Web Protest Draws RIAA Warnings
On Tuesday, numerous websites staged a protest against EMI who moved to try to block distribution of a remix of the Beatles’ White Album. “The protesters billed the event as “Grey Tuesday,” calling it “a day of coordinated civil disobedience,” during which more than 150 sites offered the album for download. Recording industry lawyers saw it as 24 hours of mass copyright infringement and sent letters to the Web sites demanding that they not follow through on the protest.”
Making Miami PAC Whiz Bang
“In a bid to turn Miami’s Performing Arts Center into one of the world’s whiz-bang wonders, students from the MIT Media Lab are spending this semester figuring out how to incorporate digital technology into the center’s opera, concerts and ballet.”
See What A Movie Sounds Like
Hollywood filmmakers are beginning to make available prints of their films that are captioned for deaf people. “While the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 has dramatically increased captioning on television, it does not require movie captions. The reason is obvious: Unlike TV captions, they can’t be turned off. The studios and theaters convinced Congress that captioning would reduce the overall audience for movies. Since then, there has been progress in developing a technology that provides captions to people at their seats.”
US Mint Declares Snow Isn’t Serious
The US Mint has rejected depicting snow on the quarter to represent Minnesota. “According to the Mint, federal law bars ‘any frivolous or inappropriate design.’ It said that lawyers for the Treasury Department, where the Mint resides, decided in 2000 that a single snowflake didn’t pass the frivolity test. But not until after the Mint had come up with its own large lacy snowflake” and proposed the idea to Vermont.
Canadian TV Drama – AWOL
Two more Canadian TV dramas were cancelled last week, and Canadian drama production is getting to be AWOL on the TV schedule. “The crisis has spiked into a full-blown emergency. It’s absolutely shameful that Canadian broadcasters can’t support two long-running series that broadcasters admit Canadians were watching. Once again, Canadian audiences and creators have fallen victim to broadcasters’ hunger for profits. I guess doubling their profits last year just wasn’t good enough.”