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Bill McGlaughlin – A Voice Not For Radio

Bill McGlaughlin has a new five-day-a-week radio show devoted to composers and their music. The popular “St. Paul Sunday” host says he almost didn’t get into radio, early in his career: “I went to Temple University in Philadelphia, and I had some friends who were involved in the university radio station. It was all pretty much student-run in those days.” The station needed to fill a music slot and McGlaughlin overheard someone proposing him for the job. He also heard the quick response, ‘Nah, nah, that’s not a radio voice.’ “I didn’t think it was. I knew I didn’t sound like any of the classic announcers.”

A “Bizarre” Dance Movie

Robert Gottlieb isn’t impressed with Robert Altman’s new dance movie “What a bizarre movie this is! Unlike most ballet movies, whose plots are relentlessly clichéd and predictable (a Rocky in tights or tutu making it against all odds), The Company has no plot at all. Although the story is credited to Barbara Turner and Neve Campbell (who also stars and co-produces), there isno story; instead, there are slices of ballet life (the physical hardships, the pain, the anxiety, the camaraderie, the glory) and yards and yards of dancing, almost all of it bad. There are characters who are never characterized, situations that are never resolved. It’s often hard to tell who is who. Or why.”

The End Of Theory

“The golden age of cultural theory is long past,’ Terry Eagleton writes in his new book, ‘After Theory’ (Basic Books), to be published in the United States in January. In this age of terrorism, he says, cultural theory has become increasingly irrelevant, because theorists have failed to address the big questions of morality, metaphysics, love, religion, revolution, death and suffering.”

Outta Time (I Think)

We all understand the concept of not wasting time. “But what is time? To paraphrase Justice Potter Stewart, we know it when we see it — but certainly, a few years into the 21st century, our understanding of time must be deeper than that. By now, you’d think, science must have figured out why time seems to flow, why it always goes in one direction and why we are uniformly drawn from one second to the next. The fact is, though, the explanations for these basic features of time remain controversial. And the more physicists have searched for definitive answers, the more our everyday conception of time appears illusory.”

Hollywood Finds A Home In The UK

“This year looks set to be a bumper year for foreign film production in the UK. According to the Film Council, investment over the previous 12 months has topped £900m, beating the previous annus mirabilis of 2000. But a boom time for British-based film-making does not necessarily mean a boom time for British film. Many homegrown productions, forced out by the new arrivals, have begun migrating to cheaper locations in eastern Europe. Last year was the first time that the number of international co-productions shot in the UK (43) edged ahead of pureblood British movies (just 42). There are two reasons for this Hollywood influx.”

The Right “Materials”

“Phillip Pullman’s writing has been dubbed ‘Harry Potter for grown-ups’, and his Dark Materials trilogy was voted the nation’s third favourite book in the BBC’s Big Read poll.” Now his “Dark Materials,” a two-part, six-hour adaptation of the bestselling epic fantasy, has opened at London’s sold-out National Theatre after “early word-of-mouth praised it as ‘thrilling’, ‘momentous’ and ‘the ultimate children’s show’.”

Hackett Resigns Cleveland Play House

Peter Hackett, who has resigned as artistic director of the Cleveland Play House, was never ever the right choice for the job, writes Tony Brown. Hackett has “handed the Play House board a golden opportunity to reinvigorate a theater that is slowly choking to death on its own mediocrity. But does the board have the will and the guts to seize the opportunity and make the Play House a theater Cleveland can be proud of?”

St. Louis: Dry Spell For The Arts

In St. Louis, “many arts groups barely have survived the recent lean years. Only five years ago, a 100-page report commissioned by the civic group St. Louis 2004 found that St. Louis boasted a healthy and relatively well-funded arts scene. But that was when arts organizations were reaping the benefits of a flush economy. Since then, foundations have seen their portfolios shrink, and corporations that once generously contributed have moved or have been bought, and the government has collected fewer taxes to share.”