The Guardian newspaper is planning an American edition. “Its tentative form is as a weekly magazine, quite unlike any other weekly magazine that has been started in the U.S. in the past generation. Not only is it about politics, but the magazine—meant to be 60 percent derived from the Guardian itself, with the rest to come from American contributors—has a great deal of text unbroken by design elements. This is almost an extreme notion. Quite the antithesis of what virtually every publishing professional would tell you is the key to popular and profitable publishing—having less to read, not more. Even with the Guardian’s signature sans-serif face, it looks like an old-fashioned magazine. Polemical. Written. Excessive. Contentious. Even long-winded.”
Blog
Blockbusteritis
Are audiences growing tired of blockbuster sequels? “Nearly 30 of this year’s big Hollywood films are sequels, but in the US ticket sales are down and there is a feeling that what seemed like a magic marketing notion no longer works. The big three screen offerings last weekend were sequels: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blue, and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. According to the box office monitor, Nielsen EDI, sales were down 15 per cent on last year’s July 4 holiday weekend.”
Do Florida Politicians Dislike The Arts?
Florida legislators recently turned art-unfriendly. “Increasingly, this state’s leaders seem to regard arts and cultural endeavors as expensive luxuries, in cities, towns and schools alike. Even worse, they regard government funding for cultural programs with an air of disdain and suspicion. In the recent legislative session, legislators diverted most of the state’s cultural funding to cover gaping holes left in other parts of the budget…”
America’s Most Literate City? Not LA
Los Angeles prides itself on being a literate city. But a recent survey of America’s most literate cities places LA 54th. “To get to Los Angeles’ place on the list, in fact, you must wade past Las Vegas (tied for 13th), Newark, N.J. (18) and Wichita, Kan. (39); beyond most other major California cities, including San Francisco (5), Sacramento (25), San Diego (40) and Anaheim (53), all the way down to the bottom 10 on the list, just above Fresno. Even so — Toledo?”
Shaking Rattle At Beethoven
Putting your stamp on Beethoven’s nine symphonies has traditionally been the great conductor’s calling card. It happens less these days, but Simon Rattle is the star of the day and he’s got a new set of recordings of the symphonies. Tim Page reports that “this would hardly be my first (or, for that matter, my 10th) choice for a complete Beethoven. Rattle has attempted to meld historically informed performance practice with old-fashioned orchestral grandeur, which means that the tempos tend to be on the quick side while the sonorities are full and lush. So far, so good. But Rattle places such an emphasis on drama and ferocity that many of the gentler and more expansive qualities of Beethoven’s art are lost.”
The New Glyndebourne
The Glyndebourne Festival in the late 90s had fallen upon considerable disrepeair. “Now, with a new, young leadership team in place, the future of Glyndebourne looks generally bright. Such a popular and excellent festival is not likely to self-destruct. Still, whether the new administration can find a way back to what now looks like a golden age of a decade ago, or whether in the name of fiscal sobriety it will shy away from innovation, remains to be seen.”
Tapping At A Higher Level
“Like Mikhail Baryshnikov or Michael Jordan, Savion Glover has raised the technical baseline of his field: maneuvers once extraordinary are now commonplace. Such technique, especially speed, is often overused, but the greater threat is over-influence. Dancers understandably want to model themselves after Mr. Glover, but merely to imitate him would be to betray the example he’s set — the way he absorbed the styles of his mentors and forged his own, as they had before him. Despite his frequent deference to both predecessors and contemporaries, the press often treats him as the only tap dancer worth noticing. Such attention (and its financial fruit) encourages imitation, yet even without it, Mr. Glover’s reinterpretation of tradition is compelling enough to obscure other options.”
The New Cultural Paradigm
We’ve moved into a new era in the culture, writes Frank Rich. “In post-9/11 New York, it’s not those tired 20th-century battles about pornography and blasphemy that draw blood. The new culture wars often spring from 9/11 itself, starting with the future, aesthetic and otherwise, of ground zero.” So here’s “the leading front of the culture war: can architecture, commerce and artistic entrepreneurship (a new City Opera? a Museum of Freedom sponsored by American Express?) so quickly bind the gravest wound in New York’s modern memory? Officially, we keep being told, the answer is yes…”
This DVD Will Self-Destruct…
A new DVD – one that will destroy itself in 48 hours, is being tested. This DVD, known as EZ-D to its makers, can be “played for 48 hours after being removed from its cover. It will then self-destruct—not in flames, its inventors hasten to add, but because contact with the air eventually renders its surface opaque, making it impossible for the laser in a disc player to read the data beneath. The idea is to revamp the video-rental market. At the moment, if you want to hire a movie for a couple of days you have to pay $5 or so for a videotape or DVD that may well be a bit scratched by previous use, and then go to all the hassle of returning it to the shop when you have finished with it. And you have to watch it soon after you have hired it, or risk paying a fine. None of this, except the 48-hour viewing period, applies to an EZ-D. It will stay in pristine condition in its case for a year, and once it has been watched—as many times as you like within the two-day window—it can be thrown away.”
Big Blue – An Art Of Business Story
When they started in the late 80s, the Blue Man Group was “perfect for its time.” These days, though, “Blue Man Group is not an art story, but a business story about art. They are the McDonald’s of the music world. Blue Man Group Productions employs 450 people. Its four stage productions attract one million people annually. Basic math shows they’re pulling in millions in revenue. Blue men have done Intel ads and are favourites of the late-night TV-show set. Their first CD, Audio, was nominated for a Grammy in 1999 and went gold. The original three blue men don’t perform any more. They are executive producers who keep up the, uh, brand standard.”