Film Board Makes Da Vinci Code Tone Down The Music

“Film censors said the musical score was too ‘tense’ for young children and ‘bone-crunching’ sound effects accentuated the onscreen violence to an unacceptable level. The British Board of Film Classification went ahead and awarded the film – which contains a series of bloody murders and scenes of a monk flagellating himself -a 12A-certificate only after the producers made significant changes to the audio content.”

Business Before Pleas… Oh, Heck, We Can Do Both

Getting music played on commercial radio is getting harder and harder, particularly if your work is in the hip-hop genre. Tiny playlists and PR-driven conglomerates make it almost impossible for emerging artists to get their music in the ears of consumers. So where should the snubbed masses of musicians turn? How about strip clubs? “The music industry increasingly has embraced the strip club out of necessity and convenience… Strip clubs are one of the fastest-rising segments among entertainment venues,” and DJs there can play complete tracks uninterrupted, and aren’t afraid to try out new material. Moreover, strip clubs have become an important place for hip-hop stars to be seen…

New King Of Organs To Debut In Philly

Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts will finally be complete this week, when the center unveils a massive $6.4 million, 32-ton, 6,938-pipe organ in its main concert hall, and inaugurates it with a 10-day festival featuring the Philadelphia Orchestra. “The specs alone make you want to hear what will be the largest functioning concert-hall organ in the United States. The Kimmel instrument – in contrast to the sensible but disappointing portable organ once used in the Academy of Music – is the magnum opus, eight years in the making, of the busy Dobson Pipe Organ Builders Ltd., of Lake City, Iowa.”

Art School Not-So-Confidential

So what’s it really like in art school, and who, aside from art school students, cares? Trendy new films aside, are art school teachers really as flaky and married to ideology as they’re always portrayed? Are students really so vicious and unfeeling as to barbecue their colleagues in open session? Not often, says Christopher Hutsel, though he has some stories of his own. But the main distinguishing features of an art school may be the segregation of the design students from the budding artists. And then, of course, there are the comic strippers. No one gets them.

Hollywood On The Verge Of Another Big Transition

Everyone agrees that people are going to movies in the theatre less and less, and that this represents a challenge for Hollywood studios. But since much of the drop in ticket sales can be explained by the upward swing in DVD ownership and the wild success of services like NetFlix, does the ovie industry really have anything to worry about? More importantly, is the current uncertainty any different from the various other eras in which Hollywood has been forced by technology to change its business practices?

Keeping The Money Flowing (And The Donors Happy)

“Keeping a nonprofit theater — or any other artistic operation — going is a constant struggle in an age of vacillating government support and sometimes fickle corporate and personal giving… Just as a performer will call on a range of techniques to master a difficult part, nonprofits employ all sorts of techniques, from the traditional (ask the board, write the grant) to the unorthodox (go-go dancers and poker games), to lure contributors.”

And Starring, The Louvre

The film version of The DaVinci Code hits theatres this month, and the Louvre is bracing for a tidal wave of vistors as a result. After all, the legendary museum plays a crucial role in the story, and officials allowed director Ron Howard to film several key scenes in its galleries. Despite the logistical difficulties involved (the book calls for a character to tear down a priceless Caravaggio painting, for instance,) the Louvre and the Hollywooders reported no conflicts.

Art That Needs A Construction Permit

As installation art continues to get bigger and bigger, the tactical expertise required to erect it becomes ever more involved. “As art with high production values has become increasingly common, the role of the artist has evolved into something closer to that of a film director who supervises a large crew of specialists to realize his or her vision.”

A Whole Universe In Glass (With Chandeliers)

The chandeliers at New York’s Metropolitan Opera House are big and impressive. Unless, of course, you’re speaking on a cosmic scale, in which case they’re actually just little sparkly things. Compared to, say, the Big Bang, the chandeliers are pretty infinitesimally small, and one might wonder why one would compare the two at all. But that didn’t stop artist Josiah McElheny from trying to represent both in a single glass sculpture.

The Real DaVinci Conspiracy

There may be nothing on Earth more overexposed than The DaVinci Code, and that presented a unique marketing challenge for the folks behind the movie version of Dan Brown’s bestseller. How, after all, do you sell a suspense film when the entire world already knows what’s going to happen? The answer may be to abandon traditional marketing altogether, and court the controversy that seems to follow DaVinci around. “The fiendishly clever part? Convincing us the ensuing publicity is merely a series of random events.”