What would it have been like to be brought up by George Orwell? Pretty grim, you might think. But you would be wrong.
Tag: 03.15.09
Nineteen Ways Of Looking At Michelle Obama
“She’s a private person in a public role, a black woman in a costume drama played previously only by whites, an outspoken professional with a traditional sense of hearth and home. We all feel like we know her, but we don’t really.” A series of essays on the new First Lady and the many things she seems to signify.
(Saying Horrible Things About) Arthur Laurents (Saying Horrible Things)
“[A]t 91, Laurents is one of the few left standing from the theater’s golden age of bad behavior. As well-known as he is for his writing, he is almost better known for his wronging.”
NJ Governor Plans To Fund Arts Below Legal Minimums
“Several years ago, the Legislature decided the arts, history and good beaches were so essential to New Jersey that it passed laws setting a guaranteed level of funding for those entities and others. As it looks for ways to save money in a recession budget, the Corzine administration has formulated a new approach to those laws: ignore them. Since taking office, Corzine has never fully funded the cultural offices, but this week he proposed cutting their budgets below the minimum limits required by law.”
Free Online Documentaries Find Audience, But Profits Lag
“A new online distribution system for documentaries launched in July has found widespread consumer adoption, but is still not close to providing substantive income to documentary or low-budget filmmakers. SnagFilms, launched by former National Geographic Films chief C. Richard Allen and former AOL executive Ted Leonsis, is geared to using the social networking tools of the web to feed a new distribution model for low-budget films.”
In Greenwich Village, Blandness Triumphs Over Whimsy
“When St. Vincent’s hospital finally swings a wrecking ball at the O’Toole Building–the endearingly awkward, formerly white, three-layered stack with tear-off perforations and protruding upper floors on Seventh Avenue and West 12th Street–it will be for the greater good of Greenwich Village. The medical tower that rises in its place will serve the community and fortify the hospital’s tottering finances. But this improvement comes at the cost of eccentricity.”
Russian Film Industry Shuts Down
“About 100 Russian film projects have been canceled or suspended since the fall, when the film industry experienced the impact of the economic crisis, according to the Russian film industry’s trade journal, Byulleten kinoprokatchuika. Earlier this year, Mosfilm, the country’s largest studio complex, said it had no films being shot in its studios.”
Getty Makes Big Cuts After Investments Fall
“The J. Paul Getty Trust, envied as the economic Goliath of the museum world, is cutting its operating budget nearly 25 percent for the coming fiscal year — an emergency response to investment losses that have totaled $1.5 billion since July and nearly $2 billion since mid-2007.”
Dubai (The Arts Capital) Bans The Arts
“Playing loud music, dancing, nudity, kissing and holding hands in public is considered inappropriate behavior under new guidelines laid down by the authorities of Dubai.”
The Arts In Hard Times – All About The Money?
Those inclined towards sanguinity are suggesting that the New Depression will lead to some timeless art and literature, maybe our own The Grapes of Wrath. (I’m envisioning a Hamlet: 2010, in which a young Prince of Wall Street, mourning the death of his broker father who may or may not have thrown himself off the roof of the New York Stock Exchange, grasps the skull of a deceased court jester named Jim Cramer and murmurs, “To nationalize, or not to nationalize? That is the question.”)