A bill “currently seeking Senate approval, contains an amendment that would allow bureaucrats to withdraw tax credits for Canadian films and TV shows deemed in violation of the Criminal Code. Yet the problem is a hypothetical one, because no such film has ever been presented for tax credit consideration.”
Tag: 03.10.08
Brain Scans: Impressionists Imitate Through Visual Image
“Impressionists seem to use visual images to ‘become’ the people they are imitating, according to a brain-scanning study that started as a public demonstration and is now being expanded.”
A Big Online Film Festival – But Is There An Audience?
“The Babelgum Online Film Festival, a collection of more than 1,000 short films that have been gathered on the Internet since last summer, was opened to the public last week. Viewers can watch the videos and vote for their favorite submission.”
ABBA Settles With Playwright
“Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus, the two male members of pop quartet ABBA, have settled a long-running legal dispute with a Swedish playwright over credits for a musical that was once Broadway-bound.”
Lebanon Bans Animated Persepolis
“Lebanese authorities have banned “Persepolis” after fears it may exacerbate the fragile political situation there. Authorities likely want to avoid any potential fallout from offending pro-Iranian members of the Lebanese opposition, notably Hezbollah.”
Opera Everywhere
What with the Met, La Scala, and LA Opera sending their products out to movie theatres, there’s suddenly a glut of opera. Add it up: That’s 50 opera broadcasts in the next four months, not counting radio.
Why Does Architecture Have To Fight To Be Considered Art?
“Christie’s is auctioning Richard Neutra’s Kaufmann Desert House as a work of art, hoping to redefine what was recently considered a derelict building ripe for demolition into a $25m aesthetic masterpiece. What’s surprising is that anyone should doubt this. The house is an extraordinary achievement from the golden age of American modernism, by a renowned designer. Why does Christie’s have to labour the point that it is ‘art’? Why would anyone mistake it for anything else?”
A Nation Of Sourpusses
“For the English, Eric Weiner claims, happiness is an American import based on silly, infantile drivel. What the British like to be is grumpy, and they derive a perverse pleasure from their grumpiness. British life is not about happiness; it’s about getting by, he says.”
The Revitalized Musical? I Don’t Think So!
The West End may currently be running with 25 “musicals” but “the idea of a revitalisation of the form is very much overplayed. Six are blockbuster films reworked in the hope that they will already have a receptive audience, five are jukebox musicals using the well-worn hits of popular artists such as Abba or Buddy Holly, five are revivals of old favourites such as The Sound of Music, one is a catalogue show of the works of the composer-lyricist William Finn, another an African take on Mozart, which leaves seven original works, some of which have been running for close on 20 years, such as Phantom of the Opera or Blood Brothers.”
China – The Sleeping Giant Of Classical Music?
“Classical music in China – despite the mass production of musicians, the vitality of “high-end” music-making in Beijing and the phenomenon that is Lang Lang – is still in its infancy. It has yet to truly enter the bloodstream: it feels thinly spread, sponsor-dependent, in some ways misdirected. Every music student wants to be a superstar soloist, another Lang Lang; established artists are happy to be teachers or showbizzy gala stars.”