Too soon? I think the question is irrelevant. Timing is less important than quality. “United 93” makes a fierce and honorable case for this being the right time for Greengrass’ brand of storytelling. The film has something to do with courage under unimaginable circumstances, but it does not go in for any of the usual methods. Nor does it allow the audience the usual peaks and valleys of tension and release.
Tag: 04.23.06
Your Own Personal Radio Station
“Listeners create a station simply by typing in a song name or artist, and Pandora launches a radio stream, playing songs that have similar attributes to the individual user’s selection. Each listener can then fine-tune the personal station, giving a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to songs, and Pandora responds, paring the attributes more specifically to the user’s taste. Conversely, users can add more music to expand the musical gene pool. Listeners can share their personally created “radio stations” with others by e-mail and can also view top stations being played.”
Ballet Turns To Wellness For Dancers
“Studies show the otherworldly beings who beautify the world’s stages with seemingly effortless stretches, extreme turnouts, leaps and lifts are engaging in an activity as challenging as any high-level contact sport. As a result, dance medicine has steadily outgrown its sports medicine niche identity in recent years, due to increasing awareness of ballet’s hard-core physical and mental challenges.”
Midori – New Takes On New Music
“Now, at 34, Midori has begun commissioning new music in a joint initiative with the violinist Vadim Repin. She has also decided that as a musician and teacher, she has to do more than simply perform contemporary music. She has to persuade everyone, from reluctant arts administrators to confused audience members, that there is a good reason to listen.”
The Difference between Movies And TV
Why are some people upset over the new movie about doomed Flight 93? There have been TV depictions, and there haven’t been protests. “Movies have a tendency to work on our unconscious, while television works on our conscious. The big picture, the sound, the effects. We expect different things of movies. Movies create the feeling of reality, whereas all the other [art forms] can go into abstraction. And we deal with things through abstraction in a very different way.”
Where Has Howard Brenton Been?
“English dramatist Howard Brenton has written more than 40 plays, long and short. In Britain he is grouped with such contemporaries as Caryl Churchill, Edward Bond and David Hare. Yet, unlike them, Mr. Brenton is hardly known in the United States.”
The Pulitzer’s Playwright Insult
“To sponsor an award, to authorize jurors to search out the best and then to announce that none of their recommendations measure up to some hypothetical benchmark, is a slap in the face not only to their work but to the art they represent.”
Edward Villella On Building Miami Ballet
In 20 years, the company has become a major regional company. The troupe has grown from 19 dancers to 50, from a $1-million annual budget to $10million, and from a single base in Miami Beach to seasons in four metro-area counties. “Somebody has to do it, so I do,” he says. “I talk about the repertoire and I break down the abstractions, where these geniuses reduced things to their poetic essence.”
Reviving The Grand Old Big Screen Palaces
“Oakland is one of a nearly a dozen Bay Area cities committing millions to theater restoration projects. They are dusting off old architectural relics — some dating back to vaudeville days — that closed and sat dormant after being damaged in earthquakes or made redundant by television, cineplexes and other entertainment options. Local officials, like their counterparts in cities across the nation, are betting that their investments will bring cultural capital to rundown neighborhoods, particularly downtowns, and spur economic activity.”
Will Corporations Step Up To Help New Jersey Arts?
New Jersey officials suggest that the state is tapped out for arts money. The solution? Corporate money, they say. Only one problem – though the number of arts organizations has increased, corporate donations have flatlined and then tailed off…