David Patrick Stearns weighs in on “Bellini’s less watchable, theatrically antiquated I Puritani,” the Metropolitan Opera’s second simulcast offering. “A lesson lies in some of those 3-D movies from the 1950s: Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder is basically a stage play on film. That isn’t a problem with a 3-D print that puts you in the same room as the actors, but in a conventional print it’s as static as I Puritani. In present form, simulcasts are just a better variation on what came before. It’s still a relay medium.”
Tag: 01.09.07
A Movie Theatre With (Egad!) Only One Screen
“Today, single-screen theaters are no longer endangered – they’re practically extinct, maybe 150 nationwide, a handful in this area. Some fill niche markets, showing art films or classics. Others have found new life as anchors for business districts, a means for generating excitement and driving foot traffic.” A new life is the hope for the 94-year-old Hiway Theatre of Jenkintown, Pa., about to reopen after a $1.6 million renovation.
Americans In A Rush To Sell Art For Big £££
“For the last century, art collections have generally flowed from culturerich Europe to cash-rich America. Now, there are signs of them going the other way. Works from three major American collections of Impressionist and modern art will go on the block next month at Sotheby’s in London — a result, art world insiders said, of the increasingly worldwide art market and also the rise of the pound relative to the dollar.”
Operetta, Outside The Opera House
“Operetta, once the most popular European form of musical theater, has declined in its native lands, while in the United States it never caught on strongly. Today Johann Strauss’s ‘Fledermaus’ and Franz Lehar’s ‘Merry Widow’ are the only two operettas Americans are likely to have encountered, apart from the light operas of Gilbert and Sullivan.” A festival called Mostly Operetta, presented this month in New York by the Austrian Cultural Forum, updates the aging art form and puts it in an intimate space.
Hamlet And Ophelia Were Exceptions To The Rule
Danes score higher than other Westerners on life satisfaction, and scientists think they know why. “In a paper appearing in the Dec. 23 issue of the medical journal BMJ, researchers review six likely and unlikely explanations, and conclude that the country’s secret is a culture of low expectations. … Danes continually report lower expectations for the year to come, compared with most other nations. And ‘year after year, they are pleasantly surprised to find that not everything is getting more rotten in the state of Denmark,’ the paper concludes.”
A Movie Beyond Actors
“The film, with a budget of about $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in 3D even in conventional theaters. The plot pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, bringing live actors and digital technology together to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.”