The Toronto Film Festival is back and as big as ever, and while the festival has gained an international reputation by embracing films from around the world, it, like nearly every other cultural enterprise in the country, reserves a significant portion of time and exposure for home-grown work. This year’s top Canadian film at the TFF will be Gary Burns’s A Problem With Fear, which impressed festival organizers enough for them to give it a prime opening-night showing, outside of the normal “Perspective Canada” portion of the event.
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Art: The New (Old) Alternative Medicine
“Art opens people up and delves deep. Anyone who’s ever poured out his passion on a dance floor, sung John Mayer in the shower or felt rapture at Swan Lake knows it. But can that delving heal people, in both body and mind, as a veritable army of art therapists, drama therapists, dance therapists, cinema and photo therapists, expressive arts practitioners, patients, their families, hospice workers and holistic musicians believe?”
The Dave Eggers Show
Chances are, you’re either sick to death of hearing about Dave Eggers, or you can’t get enough of him. Either way, there’s little doubt that the ultra-independent Eggers is raising the bar for authors, publishers, and the book industry in general. His readings are more like stand-up comedy acts; his commitment to small, independent booksellers is legendary; and his burning desire to use his unexpected wealth and fame to craft a literary world based less around marketing and more around, well, literature, appears to be quite genuine. Of course, he’s also ridiculously good at self-promotion, but then, that’s part of the game, isn’t it?
Trying Anything To Get The Kids Involved
A new educational initiative sponsored by the Chicago Symphony’s Ravinia Festival combines the classics with modern pop music overtones, in the hope of making the genre less intimidating. It’s a strange effect, but John van Rhein says that if it works, it’s worth it. “If such tactics are what’s needed to turn on kids to a 173-year-old symphonic masterpiece, so be it… The project is one of many comparable initiatives undertaken by classical music organizations across the nation… In so doing, they are taking up some of the slack from an educational system that has failed miserably to keep classical music in the public school curriculum.”
And It Never Hurts To Have A Backup Profession
At a lakeside resort in Central Maine, the wait staff are no ordinary foodservice types. Quisisana, a resort catering to New England’s well-to-do, decided to kill two birds with one stone by recruiting its service staff almost entirely from the nation’s top music conservatories. Students from such prestigious institutions as Juilliard and New England Conservatory bus tables and wash dishes by day, then throw on tux and tails in the evening to provide entertainment for the resort’s guests. It may sound a bit exhausting, but for music students who would otherwise have to sacrifice their summer practice time in order to make money, it’s the perfect summer job.
Trying The Soft Sell
Hollywood has been watching the heavy-handed tactics of the recording industry as it attempts to put an end to illegal online file-swapping, and it can’t have failed to notice that that none of the hardball tactics have yet made a dent in the problem. So the Motion Picture Association of America is trying more of a good cop routine in its own battle against movie piracy. A new series of anti-piracy ads will begin running this week, with the message coming from set designers, craft people, and other lower-level movie types, rather than from studio execs, for whom consumers are unlikely to have a lot of sympathy.
Refusing To Roll Over For The Record Industry
One of the recording industry’s recent efforts to stem the flow of illegal music downloads on the internet was to issue subpoenas to dozens of American colleges and universities, demanding that the schools turn over the names and addresses of students known to be trading copyrighted material on school servers. But this week, two Boston schools have filed motions to quash the subpoenas, claiming that the industry failed to give the schools a reasonable amount of time to inform their student bodies. One Boston College administrator insists that the motions to quash are not designed to protect students engaged in illegal file trading, but to make sure that the law is followed to the letter.
Spain Gets Tough With File-Swappers. Really Tough.
“In what is being touted as the largest legal action of its kind, a Spanish law firm has announced plans to file a copyright-violation complaint against 4,000 individuals who allegedly have swapped illegal files over peer-to-peer networks in that country.” The law firm says it will demand the maximum sentence for every software pirate it convicts. That sentence is four years in prison.
Heritage Lottery Allocates £11.5 Million For Raphael
The UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund has agreed to contribute £11.5 million towards the possible purchase of a Raphael masterpiece owned by the Duke of Northumberland. The Duke has been planning to sell the painting to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, but agreed to give the UK’s National Gallery a chance to buy it first, so as to keep the important work in country. The National Gallery had originally asked the Lottery for £20 million, then revised its request to £11.5 million after concluding that their higher request would never be met. The gallery will now need to raise another £9.5 million privately in order to offer a “matching bid.” Even then, there is no guarantee that the Raphael would remain in the UK.
Deferring To American Nationalism
After hemming and hawing and delaying and looking nervously over their shoulders for the better part of two years, the folks at Miramax are finally releasing a supposedly controversial Australian film into the U.S. market. The delay, which began after the 9/11 attacks, and continued through the invasion of Iraq, was a result of studio fears that Americans would be furious at the plotline of Buffalo Soldiers, which revolves around American soldiers involved in “illegal activities.”