“We’ve seen the gangster movie as psychological study, love story, social commentary and family drama. It has come in guises as various as the European art film … and the lurid exploitation quickie.” Herewith, “a baker’s dozen of variations on the gangster theme” – gangster as monarch, gangster as comic relief, gangster lovers, ghetto gangstas, yakuza, singing child gangsters …
Tag: 06.29.09
A Grant To Keep Opera Alive In Orlando
“United Arts of Central Florida Board of Directors voted to earmark $200,000 for a proposal to keep opera alive in Central Florida” – with a semi-staged opera-in-concert presented by the Orlando Philharmonic next year – “following the Orlando Opera Company’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy filing in early June. […] The [ultimate] goal is for a new opera company to be in place when the $425 million Dr. P. Phillips Orlando Performing Arts Center opens.”
Portrait Of The Artist (Rembrandt) As A Young Card Sharp
“[It] is the earliest depiction of Rembrandt as a hopeful teenager, not as he would have liked to have been seen but how he looked to a fellow art student in Amsterdam. Jan Lievens painted Rembrandt at the age of 16, as the central figure in The Cardplayers, which is believed to have been completed in 1623-24.”
Michael Kaiser: Dangerously Wrong Decisions Imperil Arts
“While arts funding only fell 6% last year, many arts organizations are making drastic cuts to their programming. Many have canceled performances, eliminated educational programming, shortened seasons, or closed altogether. Others are ‘dumbing down’ their product; there is a widespread call to make programming more accessible (read boring). Still more are cutting their marketing dramatically; after all, they argue, who will notice if we spend less on communicating our (reduced) programming?”
You Mean My Chaotic Brain Is A Good Thing?
“Though much of the time it runs in an orderly and stable way, every now and again it suddenly and unpredictably lurches into a blizzard of noise. Neuroscientists have long suspected as much. Only recently, however, have they come up with proof that brains work this way. Now they are trying to work out why. Some believe that near-chaotic states may be crucial to memory, and could explain why some people are smarter than others.”
Oxford Press President: Google Settlement Is A Good Thing
“It has taken many months for the import of the settlement to become clear. It is exceedingly complex, and its design — the result of two years of negotiations, including not just the parties but libraries as well — is, not surprisingly, imperfect. It can and should be improved. But after long months of grappling with it, what has become clear to us is that it is a remarkable and remarkably ambitious achievement.”
With Crown, 21st-C. Architects To Alter Westminster Abbey
“Plans to build a new structure on the roof of Westminster Abbey have been announced, changing the London skyline in the first major building work at the medieval Abbey for 250 years. The addition – an architectural feature in the shape of a large crown – will complete a section of the church that has been left unfinished for centuries.”
Could Time Delay On Aggregation Save Newspapers?
Maybe the answer to newspapers’ ills isn’t a new business model. Maybe it’s as straightforward as rewriting copyright law. First Amendment lawyer David Marburger and his economics professor brother, Daniel, “propose changing federal copyright law to give the original newsgatherer a period — they’d like it to be 24 hours — in which the news item would be available only on the originator’s Web site. “
To Survive, Skylight Opera May Need Aid Of A.D. It Fired
“The Skylight Opera Theatre continues to stagger under the weight of the public relations disaster in the wake of the firing of artistic director Bill Theisen on June 16. The social media, letter writing and e-mail campaigns to reverse that decision have maintained momentum.” The company’s only hope may rest in the man it fired, if he chooses to help it.
Stephen Eich Named Pasadena Playhouse’s Exec. Director
“Stephen Eich, the former managing director of the Geffen Playhouse, has been named executive director of the Pasadena Playhouse in partnership with Playhouse artistic director Sheldon Epps. … Eich, who left his Geffen post last June, is also a former managing director of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company.”