Fans of the James Bond franchise generally aren’t terribly difficult to please. Give them a suave, hunky leading man, a sexy female sidekick, and plenty of car chases and explosions, and most Bond aficionados are perfectly content. So it was a bit of a surprise this month when a website was launched with the express purpose of organizing a Bond boycott as a protest against the decision to replace popular Bond portrayer Pierce Brosnan with actor Daniel Craig.
Tag: 02.22.06
BBC To Invest In BritFilm, If The Money’s There
“The BBC plans to invest at least £100m in the UK film industry over 10 years. The money will be split between homegrown movie projects and acquiring British films for broadcast on UK TV.” However, the Beeb’s proposal is contingent on the corporation receiving the significant increase in federal funding for which it has asked the UK government.
On Second Thought, Mediation For Louisville
After weeks of recriminations and threats through the press, the Louisville Orchestra has agreed to mediation in its ongoing contract negotiations with its musicians. The orchestra’s management team had initially rejected mediation, and has said that without major cuts to the size of the orchestra and the compensation package paid to the musicians, the organization would declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidate before the end of the current season.
Oramo To Leave CBSO
Finnish conductor Sakari Oramo has announced that he will step aside as music director of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 2007-08 season, after ten years at the helm. The CBSO won’t be completely bidding farewell to Oramo, however: in a rather unusual move, he will be granted the title of principal guest conductor beginning with the 2008-09 season.
Hong Kong Puts Brakes On Enormous Cultural Center
The Hong Kong government has put plans for one of the world’s largest cultura; centers on hold. “The decision is a setback for several major museums. The Georges Pompidou Center in Paris and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and the Museum of Modern Art in New York had been vying for the right to run museums at the cultural center, which was to be several times the size of Lincoln Center.”
Banality Of The New
“We live in an age addicted to newness. It is a core attribute of any successful person or product in our consumer society. The whole economic system in the developed world depends on our continuing desire for new things that we often do not need. Do you remember the Innovations catalogue? How long has being new been a way of saying something is good in art? When did this quality take on a life of its own apart from being beautiful or thought-provoking?”
Met Signs Return/Loan Deal With Italy
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Italian government have signed a watershed accord on Tuesday under which the Met will return 21 artifacts that Italy says were looted from archaeological sites within its borders. In exchange for yielding the works to Italy — including a prized sixth-century B.C. Greek vase known as the Euphronios krater and a set of Hellenistic silver — the Met will receive long-term loans of prestigious objects from Italian collections.”
Met Trustee To Talk Italian Artifacts
A major Metropolitan Museum trustee agrees to talk with the Italian government about disputed artifactgs in her collection. “The Met’s director, Philippe de Montebello, said the trustee, Shelby White, had told him last week that she was willing to meet with Italian cultural officials to discuss eight works she owns that the Italians believe were illicitly excavated and removed from the country. ‘She wants to do the right thing and she is eager for this to be behind her’.”
A First: War Crimes Against Architecture
Slobodan Milosovic is on trial for war crimes. Among the charges? “The intentional and wanton destruction of religious and cultural buildings of the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat communities. This is the first time that anyone has been properly charged in a court of law for wartime attacks on architecture as well as civilians, and a direct connection noted between the two.”