The British government is considering early plans to sell off the fantastically costly Millennium Dome at a bargain basement price. The Dome has been a popular and critical flop. – The Telegraph (UK)
BAIL OUT: Dome needs £30 million from the National Lottery to stave off bankruptcy and save the jobs of 5,000 staff. – The Independent (UK)
Who says photography has to record something real? In the late ’70s, a number of artists began “questioning the documentary capacity of photography. Instead of taking pictures of extant scenes, James Casebere built elaborate models and photographed them, presenting the prints rather than the constructions as his art. Other artists were coming up with similar strategies at the time, all departing from the tradition of straight photography and its commitment to reality.” – Los Angeles Times
Cleveland? Yes Cleveland. – Boston Globe
Dance Theater of Harlem’s Arthur Mitchell and New York City Ballet’s Peter Martins, Balanchine progeny both, talk about the challenges of directing dance companies in modern times. – New York Times
Washington DC’s Kennedy Center says it runs one of the best dance series in the country. “But over the past several years the ballet program has sunk to an alarming depth. The number of subscribers plummeted more than 40 percent between the ’91-92 season and last year.” Despite highlights such as Moscow’s Bolshoi, audiences have had to suffer through “Dracula,” a commercially driven hit that gets high marks for boredom, and “Nutcracker on Ice,” “an effort by a troupe of lower-tier Russian skaters that probably cost the center about 89 bucks and looked it.” – Washington Post
This year audiences at Cannes have sat through a phalanx of French films and a good sampling of the best Asia has to offer. And from Hollywood? Flops and second raters. “Cannes is in crisis. The Hollywood studios prefer to advertise their films here rather than show them, and nobody seems to know where the festival is headed.” – The Sunday Times (UK) 05/21/00
Movie names sound so much alike these days, how to keep them straight? “Was ‘American Psycho’ the sequel to ‘American Beauty’? Was ‘Waking the Dead’ the follow-up to ‘Bringing Out the Dead’? – Philadelphia Inquirer (Entertainment News Service) 05/21/00
— one of the century’s most popular flutists, has died in Paris at the age of 78. – Dallas Morning News (AP)
Opera in Los Angeles has long been an iffy proposition. The LA Opera company lacks personality, and new artistic director Placido Domingo figures to give it some star power. But he’s so busy with other commitments, he won’t be able to do it himself. – Los Angeles Times
