Sales of Country Music declined in the US last year by a whopping 10 percent. That compares to an overall decline in music sales of one percent. “Country album sales fell from 76.9 million to 69.3 million units – a 9.8 percent drop, according to figures released Monday by Nielsen SoundScan, a group that monitors music sales.” Music executives blame the lack of new blockbuster releases in 2003.
Tag: 01.14.04
So Secure We’re In Danger
All this increased security and impingements on personal privacy… does it make us safer? A growing number of experts say no – in fact trying to photograph, fingerprint, search and profile more and more people makes us less safe, not more. Jeffrey Rosen is the latest to weigh in, with a new book.
Down Year For Film Critics Awards
This was a terrible year for the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, writes Rex Reed. “An award from the New York Film Critics Circle used to be the most powerful and prestigious of all the prizes in the overcrowded traffic jam of back-patting cinematic supermarket giveaway shows. People who thumbed their noses at the Academy Awards were always proud to accept a NYFCC award, and always said so onstage and in print. This is no longer true. Hasn’t been since the year the NYFCC named Cameron Diaz the best actress of the year. This year, more than one person present was overheard comparing this once-august event to an awards-show spoof on Saturday Night Live.”
Surely Vermeer Movie Is A Parody?
The new movie about Vermeer is more of a mockumentary than a documentary. “The Vermeer film’s pedestrian seriousness and fustian reverence are their own eventual parody: I found myself giggling in the intervals when I wasn’t fidgeting. Biopics like this are the cinema’s equivalent of putting a blue plaque on a wall. “Vermeer slept here”. So may many moviegoers. Nothing wrong with serious style of course, except when married to a stupefying triviality of content. As an exploration of art’s pains and processes, Girl with a Pearl Earring has all the profundity of a Mills and Boon novel.”
Is There Too Much Art-Fairing In Miami?
Miami now has three big commercial art fairs on its annual schedule. “A community that just a few years ago wondered if it would ever develop a commercial art market now finds itself grappling with the possibility that it may be saddled with too much of a good thing. After all, these waves of art dealers winging into town aren’t coming simply to enrich our cultural lives, as welcome as that may be. They’re coming to ring up sales. And one has to wonder if there are enough art-hungry customers to go around.”
Betrayal and Backlash in Harlem
The Harlem Boys Choir is in crisis, with a $30 million lawsuit alleging sexual and physical abuse at the hands of trusted employees threatening to tear the organization apart, and the choir’s founder under pressure to step down. But Walter Turnbull insists that he did nothing wrong, and cannot imagine the choir, which has changed the lives of countless underprivileged kids, going on without him. Moreover, he is still incredulous that an employee with whom he trusted his choir of young boys implicitly could have turned out to be a child molester.
The Power of Bach
A weeklong conference on the music and legacy of Johann Sebastian Bach is going on in Toronto, and William Littler finds himself wondering what it is about Bach that continues to so fascinate and inspire musicians, audiences, and scholars across the generations. “Perhaps it is the very ability of Bach’s music to survive a variety of approaches that provides a clue to its universality. As [conductor Helmuth] Rilling put it, a bad performance of Bach is still Bach, but a bad performance of Handel isn’t very good.”
Between The Pope and The Publicity
This weekend, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will perform for the pope in Vatican City, the first American orchestra to do so. But the honor of being part of such an event is only part of what makes this trip so important to the PSO, says Andrew Druckenbrod. “It is crucial for the future of this organization that it is able to put itself on the big map as it has with this Vatican affair, even if it means the slight subordination of the music to the ‘event.'”
The Politics Of Cleaning David
The “cleaning” of Michelangelo’s David is more about politics than aesthetics, claims one critic. “Fundamentally this is about money. The actual restoration itself may cost relatively little – a few hundred thousand dollars, maybe a million. But in terms of the increase in the number of admission tickets sold, the number of books, videos and toys purchased at the museum store, the reproduction rights – you’re probably talking billions. Why do you think the city of Florence and the Italian state are arguing over who owns David? The science they use to defend their decisions is irrelevant, it’s just window dressing to disguise a power struggle.
Taking On NC-17
The conventional thinking in Hollywood says that you can’t release a movie with an NC-17 rating if you want anyone to see it. And it’s true that many theaters won’t show NC-17 movies, and many publications won’t carry ads for them. But Fox Searchlight Pictures is testing the theory with a major release making its debut at the Sundance Festival. Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers features full frontal male nudity and a steamy sex scene featuring a brother and sister, will be released in February, with the controversial rating still attached, and the studio is convinced that Americans won’t be scared away by the ‘adults-only’ label.