Lynden Barber, film critic for The Australian newspaper, has been one of the Sydney Film Festival’s harshest critics. So maybe it’s a surprise that he’s just been named as the festival’s next director. “It is a poacher-turns-gamekeeper appointment considering Barber, 48, wrote that film industry insiders were calling for a rocket under the festival after “another mediocre performance” last year. He quoted critics as saying the festival was aloof and slow to address deep structural problems.”
Tag: 03.24.04
Jack Valenti Stepping Down From MPAA
After 38 years, Jack Valenti is stepping down as head of the Motion Picture Association of America. “In his decades on the job Mr. Valenti, a spry, white-haired Texan who was a special assistant to President Lyndon B. Johnson, has become a familiar figure on the Hollywood scene. He is also known for creating the current movie ratings system.”
NPR Replaces Edwards On Morning Edition
After 25 years hosting National Public Radio’s Morning Edition, Bob Edwards is being edged out of the job. “Mr. Edwards said he found out early this month that he was being reassigned. ‘I was called into an office, and they said, `We’re making a change,’ You get a line like that, and I guess you should come back with some snappy rejoinder. But of course I did not. I was very surprised.”
Winning Rambert
Mark Baldwin has a tough job. As artistic director of Britain’s Rambert Dance Company, there are expectations. “People regularly demand the impossible of Rambert: to show the latest young thing in dance, to bring a conservative public flooding to see it, and to be the world’s main ambassador for British dance creativity.”
Art To Memorialize Rwandan Genocide
A decade after the genocide that left more than 800,000 dead, Rwanda is building memorial centers. “Ten years on, Rwanda is erecting its first proper memorials – and racing to complete them by April 7, the anniversary of the first day of slaughter, when centres will open their doors to survivors, perpetrators, scholars and tourists. For those who have kept guard over mass grave sites lest the remains – proof of the genocide – disappear, these centres offer a chance to end their vigil and rebuild their lives.”
The Teacher, Her School, And Now A Church
Anna Scher spent 35 years building one of Britain’s most unconventional theatre schools, teaching thousands of students. Then she fell ill, and was replaced at the school. Though she’s teaching again, the school. Now she’s teaching again, but at the church down the street from her school, which sits empty…
UK Announces New Dance Program
The British government has announced a plan to help train and encourage dancers. “A network of dance training centres will be created around the country in the next few years, coupled with grants of between £600 and £3,000 a year to help children attend classes.”
A Theatre Grows In Brooklyn
“A $22 million, 299-seat theater designed by the architects Frank Gehry and Hugh Hardy is expected to be the newest ornament of a growing cultural district in Brooklyn.”
Zaha Hadid – Stranger At Home
Architect Zaha Hadid, who won this year’s Pritzker Prize, lives in London. “But while her small collection of completed works has catapulted her to recognition in America and on the Continent, she has not a single building to her name in Britain, where she has lived for 30 years. Although her designs won a competition for the Welsh opera house, local politics, which found her strangely angled planes too much to stomach, saw them off. Since then she has repeatedly entered British competitions such as one for a multi-million pound BBC music centre in west London, without luck.”
Newly Discovered Kipling
A newly deciphered story by Rudyard Kipling is being published. “Kipling wrote the story in 1897 when he was 32, apparently as a draft introductory tale for the Stalky & Co volume. “Deciphering Kipling’s handwriting was fiendishly difficult. I doubt whether he himself could have read it. He was in such a hurry – his mind was running faster than his hand.”