The UK has closed a tax loophole that helped finance movies, and producers say at least 40 movies in production will be affected, including some that now won’t be made. “The loophole allowed ‘tax partnerships’ to be set up in which investors would put money into a project but pull out before the film made money.”
Tag: 02.23.04
Marathon Performance – Acting In Six Shows In One Night?
Actress Jerry Hall is going to attempt to set a record for the most number of performances on London’s West End in one night. She’ll be appearing in at least half a dozen shows in a single evening. “The bid is part of One Amazing Week, a series of cultural events in London. The 47-year-old will have to dash across London’s theatreland on foot and rickshaw to complete the feat.”
Canadian Digital TV Struggles
Canadian digital TV was switched on in 2001 with 45 new subscriber channels. It’s hardly been a success. “How do you market in a mass way when more than half of the country still doesn’t have digital service? How do you persuade people to add the channel once they’ve already chosen their core package? But for a channel that will always earn 90 per cent of its revenue from subscribers – as opposed to advertisers – it’s a problem that has to be solved.”
CD Sales Reverse Declines, Now Five Months Of Increses
After a couple of years of sales downturns in the recording business, the industry has just racked up five straight months of sales gains. “So why are so few people in the music world ready to celebrate an industry comeback? ‘The past four or five months has turned the predictive ability of all of us on its head. I think people are holding their breath’.”
In RoadTrip: Struggling With A London Concert Hall
Sam Bergman on tour with the Minnesota Orchestra: The orchestra plays Barbican Hall in London, a place the critics hate, and musicians find difficult to play in. “The audience is listening to the big picture, and we’re working to create an understandable canvas, but the tiny muscle movements and mental adjustments required dictate that we must spend an inordinate amount of our time and effort on the seemingly insignificant details of our instruments and our surroundings. It’s a bit like the paintings of George Seurat – huge, beautiful depictions of idyllic scenes, all created from tiny dots dabbed on the canvas one at a time. The artist obsesses over the dots…”
At The Philhamonic: Giant Video
The New York Philharmonic, like many orchestras, is experimenting with giant video screens. “Just as, if you go to a football game, the camera focuses in on the face of the athlete. You wouldn’t want to go to a movie and just look at the back of Cary Grant. You want to see his face.” But the orchestra’s players aren’t enthusiastic so far: “It just seems like a bit of a sellout. Better we should spend the money on a hall that brings the audience closer to us. People might as well stay home with their big-screen TV’s. It’s going the route of MTV, and I’m not sure it’s the way to go.”
On The Trail Of Stolen Artifacts
An ancient Egyptian stone stele unearthed a decade ago should have, under Egyptian law, “been turned over to the government, a recovered shard of the national patrimony. Instead, something considerably more commonplace happened. It became an outlaw. Quietly, it passed into the global antiquities market. Five years later, cleansed of its illicit origins, it emerged in New York as a rich man’s prize, in the foyer of a Fifth Avenue apartment.”