“The Toronto International Film Festival Group announced yesterday that it had pumped $67-million into the economy in 2002, more than double the nearly $30-million the organization generated in 1993, the date of its last study of economic impact. In addition, the September film festival, widely considered second only to Cannes on the global stage, was responsible for $22.2-million in documented sales of four films, based on reports in trade papers such as Variety. However, the festival office says that sales figure is conservative, because a total of 41 films were sold, although not all prices are known.”
Tag: 03.19.03
Gandolfini Back On Board
Sopranos obsessives, you may resume breathing now. HBO reached a contract settlement with disgruntled star James Gandolfini this week, and the hit (no pun intended) series will not have to delay production. Gandolfini and HBO had filed lawsuits against each other after the network missed a deadline in the actor’s contract process. Conventional wisdom held that Gandolfini was angling for a raise. He got one.
Can The English National Opera Be Saved?
Members of the troubled English National Opera – threatened by layoffs – have some hope that their fortunes will improve. “Their cause is further boosted by the company’s comic inability to communicate information in a timely, orderly and credible fashion. Statements are sent out and swiftly recalled; press briefings verge on the farcical. The verifiable fact that ENO is living beyond sustainable means is lost in transmission.” But will striking save company jobs? No, writes Norman Lebrecht, “the grim truth about strikes in the arts: they never work.”
A Rocky Road To Chicago
Now that “Chicago” is a favorite for an Academy Award, those involved in the project are putting up a happy front. But the years it took to wrestle “Chicago” to the screen was a battle – stars and songs and collaborators and scripts coming and going…
Art Or Finance – Is This Any Way To Run An Arts Organization?
Arts management is a vicious circle, writes Rupert Christiansen. Here’s the way it goes: “Some ambitious romantic, out of touch with audience taste and budgetary actuality, leads the accounts to the brink of financial catastrophe and plug-pulling threats from the subsidising bodies. The board panics and appoints someone with experience of the ‘real world’ of business or industry. He or she imports a management consultancy. A lot of paper-pushing, a lot of bellowing, a lot of sacking ensues. Morale among the creators and curators is decimated, and the quality of the art plummets.” It doesn’t have to be this way…
Right Project At The Right Time
Ada Louise Huxtable is a fan of the winning design for the World Trade Center site. “The design by Daniel Libeskind is not about death and destruction, as some have feared; it is an original and eventful reconstruction of the World Trade Center site that brings the architecture of the 21st century to New York, where it has been sadly and shamefully lacking. Even as we preserve that tragic pit and its sustaining wall, they will become the source of new life. But this will happen only if the spotlight stays relentlessly on the rebuilding process, and if we do not lose the urgent sense of necessity and inevitability that has brought us this far.”