Actors at London’s Royal Court Theatre say that the audiences at their £10 Monday performances are “often warier and more discerning than other audiences, somehow harder to impress.” Are the people who pay top price easier to please? Lyn Gardner considers.
Tag: 01.21.13
Michael Winner, 77, Death Wish Director And Restaurant Critic
“In the course of a film career lasting 40 years, he made more than 30 pictures, among which were sharp social comedies such as The System (1963) and The Jokers (1966). But he derived his wealth and lasting reputation from later Hollywood hokum – notably the frenzied and graphically violent Death Wish series.” Late in life, he became a notorious restaurant critic for London’s Sunday Times.
Drop Rushdie Supporters From Book Fair, Demand Muslim Hardliners
“A group of conservative Muslim clerics in India have called on the organisers of the annual Jaipur literary festival to drop speakers who were involved in a demonstration of support for Salman Rushdie at last year’s event before the opening later this week.”
Ultra High-Definition TVs – Do Consumers Really Want Them?
“Having seen interest in 3D television fizzle, consumer-electronics firms are desperate to find some other blockbuster product that will get customers back into big-box stores. The development most are hoping will do the trick is a display technology known as Ultra High-Definition that offers four times the resolution of today’s 1,080p HDTV sets.”
Daniel Radcliffe: Why Are People Shocked About Gay Sex Scenes?
Says the actor, who plays Allen Ginsberg in the new film Kill Your Darlings, “For me, there’s something very strange about that because we see straight sex scenes all the time. We’ve seen gay sex scenes before. I don’t know why a gay sex scene should be any more shocking than a straight sex scene. Or both of them are equally un-shocking.”
Brazil’s $35 Million Promotion Campaign For Literature
“The Brazilian government is anteing up over US$35 million to fund a program over the next eight years that aims to inject Brazilian literature into international markets by funding translations into other languages, grants to publishers outside of Brazil to promote Brazilian publications …, and travel grants to send Brazilian authors on world publicity tours.”
Pop Violinist Wants To Ski For Thailand In Winter Olympics
“Vanessa-Mae, 34, has been training in Zermatt, Switzerland, for the past three years. She has the aim of competing in at least five internationally recognised events to qualify for the giant slalom and possibly the slalom at the Sochi Winter Olympics in February 2014.”
The New Opera – It Rocks
“It’s hardly a new concept–during World War I, Stravinsky wrote Histoire du Soldat as a multimedia petit spectacle that could tour on the cheap–but technology and the popularity of black-box theater have given it a fresh jolt of energy.”
The Next Big Thing (And Its Business Model?)
“Facebook is struggling to increase its ad revenue. But the social network also has more than a billion members. If you argue that such a network of people (and the data they upload) doesn’t constitute a valuable thing on its own, you haven’t understood the impact of the digital revolution.”
Can British Columbia’s Once-Thriving Movie Industry Be Saved?
“It’s been clear for some time that the production industry in B.C., worth $1.18-billion in 2011, was heading for trouble. As the Canadian dollar rose, Ontario and Quebec improved their tax credits. B.C. did not keep up.”