As the recording industry continues to tilt at file-swapping windmills and bemoan falling album sales, the movie industry has embraced new technologies, packed DVDs full of low-cost “bonus materials” beloved by consumers, and made a concerted effort to make the public aware of what a great deal it is getting when it forks over $16 for a disc. So why can’t the music industry get its act together? “People listen to the average CD many more times than they watch a DVD. Yet CDs are languishing in stores and DVDs are flying off the shelves. How to see this other than sheer music industry incompetence?”
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Dallas’s Colorful New Skyline
Dallas’s skyline gets a burst of color this week with the opening of the new Latino Cultural Center, and architect Ricardo Legorreta is already being credited with designing the most exciting piece of skyscraper architecture ever to hit the Metroplex. “Already there is evidence of color creep. The window frames of one adjacent apartment building have gone from hunter green to electric blue; another has been meticulously outlined in enchilada red. The blue tower and the terra cotta wedge of the performance hall are already landmarks, and the doors aren’t even open.”
Fusion Architecture, Without The Pretention
“The new Latino Cultural Center manages to evoke ancient traditions and cultures without becoming a theme park. That’s quite a trick in this scenographic era and one that only a sophisticated architect could pull off.”
TV Still Lily-White Behind The Camera
In recent years, American television has finally seemed to embrace at least a few prime time shows starring minority actors and reflecting the American experiences of non-whites. But the increased diversity is often restricted to the people in front of the camera. “It should come as no great surprise that Hollywood is, by and large, run by white people. But as the networks increasingly respond to pressure from advocacy groups to diversify the worlds they present on-screen, viewers are treated to more shows that purport to present a picture of life from a particular ethnic point of view, but were created and executive-produced by the same, overwhelmingly white crowd of usual suspects.”
Chicago’s Art Institute Looks To The Future
The Art Institute of Chicago and its many supporters were taken quite by surprise last week when director James N. Wood announced his impending retirement from the post he has held since 1980. Wood is as much a Chicago institution as the institute itself, writes Alan Artner, and the AIC’s board has a difficult task ahead in finding a replacement who can take the organization in new and exciting directions, without upsetting the balance of power which Wood maintained over the years.
Cruz-ing To Respectability
“Like most unpublished plays, the manuscript version of Anna in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz has the unmistakable stamp of the personal home computer: typographical errors, the playwright’s home address and telephone number, and a hurriedly scrawled ‘latest version’ annotation on its front cover. That normally gets lesser-known regional playwrights a spot on the dusty shelf of some literary manager in a struggling regional theater. It got Cruz a Pulitzer Prize.”
Frank’s Folly?
When architect Frank Gehry was hired to design and build MIT’s new Stata Center For Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences, the price tag was set at $100 million, gifts were rolling in, and the university was downright gleeful at having secured the services of arguably the hottest architect of the era. But “MIT brass now peg the budget at $300 million, although a June press release from a Stata Center supplier put the cost at $430 million. The completion date is spring 2004. And what once appeared futuristic now looks like a jumbly rehash of existing Gehry piles.”
You Get What You Pay For
Australians love to complain about the low quality of their nation’s movie industry. But screenwriter Steve Kearney says that if Australia wants better films, it needs to learn to pay the people who make them a living wage. “If we think we aren’t competing in the world market, then that’s the crappy films we are going to make. Low-budget, with minimally developed scripts about battlers who live in dingy houses. These stories emerge because that’s where writers come from. No smart person would become a screenwriter on purpose because you don’t get paid… But at least I’m not bitter. Hold on, yes I am. Hey, that’s why I write.”
The Three-Dimensional Comeback
Sculpture, it seems, is popular again, at least in Australia, and a new wave of artists working in three dimensions is garnering much attention from serious collectors. “The new breed of sculptors are decidedly challenging. Rendered death heads, dystopian buildings, a jury of chimpanzees and the Twelve Apostles constructed of chicken bones are among the pleasures to be encountered. And corporate and private money is getting behind it all.”
Why Doesn’t Australia Like Touring Orchestras?
Australia is a huge country with multiple cosmopolitan cities boasting thriving arts and music scenes. So why do so many touring orchestras find themselves playing to half-empty houses in Melbourne, Brisbane, and other Aussie cities? Some say that high ticket prices are to blame, while other “observers point out that the quality of some of the touring orchestras has not been absolutely first-class at a time when the Melbourne and Sydney symphonies are playing in top form, and that marketing for the touring groups was patchy.” Regardless of the cause, the slumping sales will probably mean that fewer touring orchestras will be stopping off Down Under.