“TV dramas have become South Korea’s hottest export since cell phones, female golfers and kimchi. The Korean craze, which also includes music and film, has swept through Japan, China, the Philippines, Singapore and most of Asia and is now making its way across the United States.”
Tag: 03.25.06
Satire Artist Proposes Wind Farm Vacation
A planned windfarm off Nantucket Island has drawn the ire of residents worried about their views. Now Artist Jay Critchley has an idea to pretty it up. Critchley has “submitted a proposal to the Corps of Engineers for ‘Martucket Eyeland,’ a ‘Las Vegas-style, family-oriented vacation land’ to be built in the ocean on a corner of Cape Wind Associates’ planned Nantucket Sound wind farm. The man-made island would offer the sights of Cape Cod – including the Pilgrim Monument – with terrific views of the turbines.”
“Inventive” – A Minority View Of “Lord Of The Rings”
“The Lord of the Rings is the most inventively staged show in history — as, indeed, it needed to be. The production’s pyrotechnics make all those gasp-inducing moments from blockbuster shows past seem primitive. That chandelier dropping in Phantom of the Opera? Pshaw. That helicopter landing in Miss Saigon? Ho hum. That revolving stage in Les Misérables? Puh-lease. More than that, these greatest hits of stagecraft seem gimmicky in hindsight. They don’t flow from a coherent vision of the source material in question or bear witness to a singular, original aesthetic — as LOTR’s gobsmacking special effects do.”
A “Fahrenheit 451” For The Information Age
“More comic books, more sex. More nonbooks, more gossip. Plenty of facts but no meaning. Sounds like an average day at a 2006 magazine rack, or in cyberspace, or on the couch with television remote in hand. The danger was never really that we would lose access to information; it was that we would lose the ability, or the desire, to make intellectually rigorous use of it.”
Denver Dance Doyen Survives A Rough Year
Cleo Parker Robinson is a long time luminary in Denver’s dance scene. “But Robinson’s optimism has been sternly tested during the past year by events that threatened her company financially and brought her great sadness. Last year the company was stung when the Denver Center for the Performing Arts ended a major annual gift of $200,000 it had been making since 1998.” And that was just the start of the troubles…
Jeune Lune Attempts To Get Back In Tune
Minneapolis’ Theatre de la Jeune Lune announced last week that it was abandoning its longtime collective leadership model. “It’s a long-overdue move. Though Jeune Lune pulled down the 2005 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater, it has been stuck in a morass that has hamstrung the company aesthetically and crippled it programmatically.”
Minnesota Orchestra Gets Played In Big Land Deal
The orchestra had bought land for an amphitheatre. When the plan fell through, the orchestra decided to sell the land. “Last summer, the orchestra officially transferred the land to MOA Property Co. On that same day, property records indicate, MOA sold the land to Target for several million dollars more than what it paid the orchestra. While the orchestra’s board chairman said that an opportunity to make money may have been lost, he had no regrets.”
The Downfall Of The “Painter Of Light”
“Art critics have long dismissed his work as a kitsch crime against aesthetics. But now the world has grown even more “unsympathetic and complex” for the artist, who describes himself as a devout Christian and has trademarked his ‘Painter of Light’ soubriquet. In court documents and other testimony, he has been accused of sexual harassment, fraudulent business practices and bizarre incidents of drunkenness including a habit of “ritual territory marking” that involves urinating in public places.”