Conductor Seiji Ozawa thinks so. He’s set up a school in Japan and hopes to teach students to express their passions by exploring and performing Mozart’s operas. “He hopes the undercurrents intended by the 18th century composer–be they romantic, melancholic or tragic–will stir the students enough to overcome their cultural reserve and play with more zeal.” – Los Angeles Times
Blog
LIKE MY WORK, LIKE ME?
Do you really have to like the artist behind a work of art? Approve of what he thought or how he lived? Certainly not. “We might have to face the fact that Shostakovich was a mediocre human being possessed of staggering musical ability.” – New York Times
DON’T OPEN UNTIL CHRISTMAS
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has sent a letter out to its members warning that the The Wall Street Journal is trying to get the jump on finding out winners of this year’s Oscars. The letter asks that voters not cooperate with the Journal’s telephone poll. – Variety 03/09/00
- SO MUCH FOR SECURITY: More than 4000 Oscar ballots that went missing were later found as being misrouted as third-class mail. – Los Angeles Times 03/09/00
- Voting deadline extended. – Boston Herald 03/09/00
- The case of the missing ballots. – Los Angeles Times 03/08/00
IT’S AN iBLAST
New company signs up 143 television stations in 102 American markets to begin broadcasting high speed wireless signals to personal computers. Service to begin early next year. – Wired 03/09/00
KING OF THE NET
Stephen King publishes his latest book exclusively on the internet. – CBC
THAI BAN
Thai politicians are protesting the latest Leonardo DiCaprio movie “The Beach” and proposing to ban it from the country. They say the film is blasphemous and portrays their country as a drugs paradise. The movie’s opening earlier this week was also protested by angry environmentalists. – BBC 03/09/00
“RECKLESS INDISCRIMINATE SEDUCTION”
Media critic Todd Gitlin says that rather than uplift and educate people, modern media conglomerates are a Band-Aid. “Fortunes are to be made in offering ever-reliable analgesics to a public hungry for fast relief,” he says. The guys who run the networks, the newspapers, the studios, the magazine and music companies are getting richer while our civic life grows poorer. – Toronto Star 03/09/00
JURASSIC TV
The television landscape is pitching and heaving, changing at an ever-accelerating rate. But the traditional networks have been slow to adapt, even as their share of viewers has slipped precipitously. – Variety 03/09/00
HUGHES PLEADS NOT GUILTY:
Time Magazine art critic Robert Hughes pleads not guilty to reckless driving in Australia. Charges against him came out of a head-on accident on a remote road. He was trapped inside his rented car for three hours and then spent 12 hours on the operating table. “I believe that I am innocent. That I am in no way criminally culpable and naturally I hope that I will be fully acquitted,” Mr Hughes said. – The Age (Melbourne)
FINAL BOW
Wreckers get to work on row of theaters on Broadway’s 42nd St. New construction planned for the site, near where the Lincoln Tunnel traffic spills into the city, is supposed to include four 99-seat theatres off a central lobby, a 199-seat theatre, and a 499-seat theatre, as well as up to 30 stories of apartments. – Backstage