Greg Dyke was “a fantastically popular director general,” and that may have been part of his undoing at the BBC. But despite the humiliation of being accused of shoddy journalism by Lord Hutton, the BBC is circling the wagons, and firing back at Prime Minister Tony Blair and his supporters. One former BBC staffer has publically accused the government of “trying to grind an independent broadcaster into the ground. The staff are determined that it won’t happen.”
Tag: 01.29.04
The Least Likely Bestseller
How can an obscure Victorian-era comic novel about three snobby Britishers on a boating trip possibly become a bestseller in Africa? Well, it helps if there’s only one bookstore in the whole southern region of your country, and if that bookstore only stocks three titles, one of which is Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men In A Boat. Welcome to southern Sudan, where civil war still rages, but one plucky bookseller soldiers on.
As Opposed To All Those Unimportant Representations Of Griffins
“An antiquities dealer with offices in New York and Geneva has been arrested for illegally importing an Iranian object, described as ‘the most important representation of a griffin in antiquity,’ and facilitating its sale to a private collector. The dealer, Hicham Aboutaam, a principal in Phoenix Ancient Art, S.A., was arrested on 13 December, following an investigation by the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The antiquity is alleged to have been part of the plundered Iranian Western Cave Treasure, much of which, the government says, is said to have been looted and dispersed since 1992 around the world.”
Former ABT Star To Head Washington School
“Former American Ballet Theatre soloist Rebecca Wright will be the new director of the Washington School of Ballet, the organization is expected to announce today. Wright succeeds the school’s founder, Mary Day, who retires this summer.” The school says that it very much wanted its new director to be someone with an impressive performance history, rather than merely an administrator.
“Fake Critic” Trial Will Proceed
Sony will have to answer to charges that it invented a movie critic and attached quotes from non-existent reviews to several of its films. The studio admitted to having concocted the critic known as David Manning, but had argued that free speech laws shielded it from prosecution for the deception. The California Court of Appeals disagreed, declaring Manning’s quotes to be commercial speech, which the Supreme Court has said does not enjoy full First Amendment protection.
Gehry Comes Home
Frank Gehry grew up in the same Toronto neighborhood which houses the Art Gallery of Ontario, and this week, he returned home to present the AGO with his plans for the museum’s latest expansion. “Mr. Gehry’s design includes a frontal promenade covered by a tilted 60-foot-high glass window the length of two football fields. There will be multistory light blue titanium walls intended to fade into the sky and turn gold on cloudy days. A grand glass roof will cover the museum’s central Walker Court. And a giant winged spiral staircase made of Douglas fir will double as a piece of interior sculpture that soars into the court’s glass ceiling.”
Biting The Hand That Writes The Notes
Mauricio Kagel is not your ordinary composer. To begin with, he’s never been all that enamored of classical music’s grand traditions and more-than-occasional pomposities. And yet, as a dedicated modernist, he belongs to a school of composition which tends to be populated with the genre’s most humorless specimens. So how does Kagel deal with being a part of an industry he frequently finds to be far too enamored of its own genius? By using his much-respected musical talents to poke fun, of course. Kagel invented the concept of “instrumental theater” back in the 1960s, and has used it to great effect: in one of his works, the conductor of a small chamber ensemble is instructed to fake a heart attack and “die” on stage.
Subtle, But Sincere, Just Like Us
Martin Knelman sees a great deal of Frank Gehry’s own past, as well as Toronto’s cultural progression, in the AGO design. “Rather than showing off, it makes connections, weaving together threads of its own past, its roots in an eccentric neighbourhood, and the ambitions symbolized by its increasingly impressive art collection. Like Toronto itself, Gehry’s AGO refuses to call attention to itself. Rather it whispers and entices, draws you in, and reveals its secrets only to those willing to explore hidden pathways. It’s the perfect articulation for a city whose essence is not skyscrapers but almost invisible ravines that tourists often fail to notice.”
$195 Million May Not Be Enough To Let Gehry Be Gehry
To Lisa Rochon, the new AGO design looks as if someone told Frank Gehry that he needed to tone down his act a bit. The 600-foot canopy lacks the swoop and sense of motion we’ve come to associate with Gehry, and “his deft meshing of volumes is nowhere to be found in the big, hulking box that rises 140 feet… at the southern back of the gallery.” Many of the design’s limitations seem to have been budget-driven, but Rochon is buoyed by Gehry’s declaration that the design is still, at some level, a work in progress.
Is Oscar Getting Hip?
“Tuesday’s Academy Award nominations were filled with surprises, featuring more ethnic minorities in top categories than ever before, nods to comic performances as well as dramatic, the first best director nomination for an American woman and a plethora of nominations for small films. Oscar is apparently loosening up.”