The internet has emerged as an important force in the indie film industry. “The emergence of virtual film festivals and the continued presence of veteran Web sites such as iFilm and AtomShockwave’s AtomFilms has made the world of indie filmmaking more accessible to the technologically savvy and has given aspiring writers, directors, producers and actors a new means of making connections. What the Internet has done for filmmakers is to lower the point of entry.”
Tag: 08.12.03
Phantom At 7000 – Bigger Than Star Wars…
The musical “Phantom of the Opera” plays its 7,000th performance in London. The musical has “packed theatres the world over and grossed £1.6 billion at the box office – more than any other film or stage play, including Titanic, Star Wars and ET. Written-by Andrew Lloyd Webber and produced by Cameron Mackintosh, Phantom opened in October 1986 starring Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman.”
Dallas Public Station Sold
Dallas public broadcasting company announced it will sell a station. “Broadcasting deals announced Monday would replace one of Dallas’ two public broadcasting stations with a religious channel and add a Spanish-language station to the area’s growing roster.”
European Heat Wave Kills Box Office, CD Sales
The heat wave in Britain is affecting the movie box office and sales of music. “Box office business at the weekend was down 13% on the previous week, while many films suffered a drop in earnings.” Music album sales were also down about 15 percent.
Fringe At Center Stage
It used to be that the Edinburgh Fringe was an adjunct to the tonier Edinburgh Festival. No longer. “For the 250,000 odd who pour into the Scottish capital – a 50 per cent population increase – the chief draw is the Festival Fringe (August 3 to 25). Once a mere tangent to the snootier international festival, it is now the world’s biggest arts event. Scorning fears of SARS, terrorism and war, hotel-room bookings are buoyant, ticket sales are robust and records have already been broken: there will be 21,594 performances of 1541 shows by 668 companies in 207 venues, the first time the number of venues has topped 200, 24 more than last year.”
The Basis Of Music?
“The chromatic scale — the musical scale that follows the notes of the piano and of which the Western seven-tone do-re-mi scale is a subset — may not be based on number ratios, as many physicists and mathematicians have proposed, but rather on human speech, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Neuroscience…”
Gregory Hines – He Pushed His Artform
“He had shone in so many ways: a stellar tap dancer, choreographer, actor, teacher, mentor, loved one. If you missed his appearances at tap festivals, you might have enjoyed his gritty portrayal of Jelly Roll Morton in Jelly’s Last Jam on Broadway. Although you might never have seen him tap, you might have caught him in one of his appearances on Will & Grace. His death caught most of us off guard; he let only those closest to him know that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer a little over a year ago.”
Historic UK Building Material At An End – Preservationists Fret
The British government has decided not to allow a lime quarry to operate, thereby effectively ending “production of traditional lime mortar in the UK and a history stretching back to the Romans. Made by burning lime in kilns, it was used on most buildings erected before 1800. Without a homegrown source, some fear that builders and enthusiastic amateurs will use cement as an alternative for repairs, causing damage to historic brick and stonework.”
Artist Wants To Rebuild Berlin Wall
A German artist wants to rebuild the Berlin Wall in plastic. He’s been “working for three years to raise the €25m (£18m) he says it will take to rebuild a 29-mile plastic copy of the Berlin Wall across the city.” He hopes to build it in time for when the city hosts the World Cup in 2006.
Julian Schnabel – Gone Before His Time
Once Julian Schnabel was hot. Now not… “Everything Julian Schnabel does has only one meaning: it’s over. The story of American art that seemed so epic, so inexhaustible, from Jackson Pollock in the 1940s to Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark in the 1970s, is over. How can a culture become so creative so suddenly, and then, as suddenly, dry up? You have to admire Schnabel’s cojones for carrying on at all, so ruthlessly has he been expunged from the memory of the art world.”