None of the top 20 films at the box office last year in America were rated “R”. “According to Daily Variety, two-thirds of all films released in 2001 earned an R, and they grabbed only 28 percent of the dollars spent at U.S. box offices. Last year, 58 percent of new movies were R-rated, and those accounted for 24 percent of ticket sales. Now, try to predict the future of bold, adult-themed cinema deserving R ratings. That is anyone’s guess. But in an industry where imitation breeds success, things aren’t looking good for moviegoers who enjoy edgier, sexier or more violent film entertainment.”
Blog
Performers Strike Against Clear Channel?
Hollywood unions are considering a strike against four New York Clear Channel radio stations. “A major issue is protecting DJs from the recent Clear Channel practice of ‘voice tracking’ – piping in lower-paid, out-of-state announcers to replace higher-paid local DJs. Clear Channel is an 800-pound gorilla and the solidarity of all performers is needed in our fight against them.”
Royal Winnipeg Ballet Cancels Asian Tour
“The Canadian ballet company had planned to take Mark Godden’s critically acclaimed production of “Dracula” to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou on an 18-day tour, beginning May 25, but heeding a travel advisory issued by Health Canada, a department of the Canadian government, the company has canceled the trip” because of concerns about SARS.
ACT – Race Against The Money-Raising Clock
Seattle’s ACT theatre said earlier this year it needed to raise $1.5 million by April 15 or it would go out of business. No word as of Wednesday if the goal had been met, but as of Monday (03/14) “a total of $987,000 had been raised to date, approximately two-thirds the overall goal. The great bulk of that sum has come from a small group of targeted individuals, including ‘board members, past supporters, general public subscribers, and people who know us,’ and donations have ranged from $5,000 to $100,000.”
Choosing Against The Internet
Being connected to the internet isn’t just a matter of being able to afford it, says a new study. “A total of 80 million American adults – 42 percent of the adult population – say they don’t use the Internet, the study found. But 20 percent of them have Internet access in the next room and choose not to go online. Or, some of them get family members to go online for them. ‘Many of the people whom we talked to define themselves as people who don’t use technology. They view themselves as high-touch versus high-tech.”
Monica Lewinsky On Broadway?
If Jerry Springer can be an opera, why can’t Monica Lewinsky be a Broadway musical? Now she will be: “Monica! The Musical” will get its first reading at the Manhattan Theatre Club on May 7. “Its creators, hope that the reading will lead to a stage berth here in New York, where it would join unlikely post-post-ironic musicals such as Debbie Does Dallas, Urinetown and the new Zanna, Don’t!” Some sample lyrics? “I feel I’ve lost my head,” sings young Bill. “Don’t look too hard for you will find it / Beneath my dress of red,” responds the siren.”
Post-Partisan Depression
The demise of the Partisan Review doesn’t mean the magazine will be forgotten. “From its inaugural issue as an independent journal, in 1937, which included Delmore Schwartz’s short story ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,’ a poem by Wallace Stevens and contributions by Lionel Trilling, Sidney Hook and Edmund Wilson, to its heyday in the 1940’s and 50’s, the journal published an astonishing range of landmark work. For many Americans, Partisan Review was their introduction to Abstract Expressionism, existentialism, New Criticism and the voices of talented young writers like Robert Lowell, Norman Mailer, Elizabeth Hardwick and Susan Sontag.”
Debunking The Guernica-At-The-UN Story
A big story before the war on Iraq began this spring had the United Nations covering up a copy of Picasso’s “Guernica” that hangs outside the Security Council. Were US officials skittish about being shown on TV talking about war in front of a powerful anti-war work? No, writes Claudia Winkler. Here’s what really happened: As the Iraq drama was playing out at the United Nations, the press corps covering the Security Council swelled. The usual press stakeout, where ambassadors routinely take reporters’ questions outside the Security Council, simply couldn’t hold the numbers – expected to reach 800 for Powell’s address on February 5. So the Secretariat moved the stakeout down the hallway. As over 200 cameramen were setting up, they complained that the background at the new location didn’t work for them.” They asked for a plain background…
Is Music Better With An Explanation?
Why do we need theory to explain music? “Actually, theory can be beautiful and illuminating (as opposed to complicated, obfuscating, quagmired, self-important, self-absorbed). And nothing could be more human: the desire to create systems out of chaos or near-chaos is a natural and (usually) noble expression of humanity’s ability to reason. And there are theories about everything: Goethe had one about color, Einstein had one about gravity, Eisenstein had one about film montage… Freud about dreams. Darwin even had a pet theory (literally). But music theory is surely the strangest. That’s the burden of trying to make sense of the most ethereal, ephemeral, abstract–one could argue the most free–art form.”
Partisan Review Folds
The 68-year-old Partisan Review once America’s “pre-eminent journal of culture and politics,” is shutting down. “The future of the quarterly journal, which is published at Boston University, was up in the air after the death of its cofounder and editor, William Phillips, in September 2002. Its heyday had clearly passed, and some critics described it as moribund.”