The film festival was the hottest thing in independent film. “Twenty years later, the festival has cooled to an uncertain ember, reflecting a business model that is slowly but surely dying.”
Tag: 01.26.09
Child’s Play (That Sells)
Does it matter that the brisk-selling work in a Melbourne gallery was created by a 22-month-old child?
American Museums Cut Back Operations
“The roughly 17,500 museums in the United States receive 850 million visitors annually.” But “major museums have frozen recruitment and salaries, laid off receptionists and café staff, slowed acquisitions, and postponed or cancelled expansion projects. Curatorial staff in charge of preserving and showcasing museum collections and overseeing exhibitions may also face layoffs – though that is likely to be a last resort.”
American Artists Lobby For Obama’s Attention
Much of the clamor arises from anticipation stirred by Mr. Obama’s campaign remarks about the importance of the arts. One of the few candidates with an arts platform, he called for a young “artist corps” to work in low-income schools and neighborhoods; affordable health care and tax benefits for artists; and efforts at cultural diplomacy, like dispatching artist-ambassadors to other countries.
Sundance – Movie Deals Slow
Buyers proved fussy. Sellers were a bit frustrated. And despite some prominent deals — including Sony Pictures Classics’ buying the rights to “An Education,” a British coming-of-age drama set in the ’60s, for a reported $3 million — there was no blockbuster sale to match the $10 million that Focus Features spent last year on a single picture, “Hamlet 2.”
Sundance – Movie Deals Slow
Buyers proved fussy. Sellers were a bit frustrated. And despite some prominent deals — including Sony Pictures Classics’ buying the rights to “An Education,” a British coming-of-age drama set in the ’60s, for a reported $3 million — there was no blockbuster sale to match the $10 million that Focus Features spent last year on a single picture, “Hamlet 2.”
Alice Tully Hall Perks Up
The imaginative makeover of Alice Tully Hall bodes well for the refurbishment of New York’s Lincoln Center.
Classical Music, The Affordable Alternative
The cliche, of course, is that classical music concerts are expensive and exclusive. In reality, “classical events aren’t nearly as expensive as most people assume, especially in comparison with the extravagant pricing schemes for élite pop acts.”
Ah, It’s Time For Newspapers To Die Again (And Again)
“In the eighteenth century, the death of a newspaper signalled the death of liberty. What it signals now is harder to know, especially because there’s death, and then there’s death. If, one day, ink-and-print is dead and gone, newspapers will endure, wraiths of ether. The newspaper didn’t stay dead in the age of the American Revolution, either.”