“Shopping in communist Poland was a dreary gantlet of shortages, rationing lines and – if you managed to buy something – Soviet-Bloc dreck. So Karol Madaj has turned it all into a board game called Queue. The challenge: Buy everything on your shopping list. Players wait outside empty government stores, fend off line-jumpers and haggle with black marketeers.”
Tag: 05.02.13
Edward Albee’s Egg Is Still Not Ready To Be Laid
“[The playwright’s] Laying an Egg, announced six weeks ago as a centerpiece of the Signature Theater’s 2013-14 season, has been postponed for the second time.”
English National Opera Launches Lottery For Seats
“The English National Opera is to launch a new seat “lottery” scheme in an effort to draw bigger audiences, with visitors paying £20 for a ticket without knowing where they will end up sitting.”
How Amazon Is Using Crowdsourcing To Transform The TV Business
“Seeking to put a twist on the typical close-to-the-vest development process the entertainment business has made standard practice, Amazon has given its massive user base free access to samples of content including full-length TV pilots that Amazon Studios is considering greenlighting. The feedback would then inform the decision as to what content to choose.”
Ontario Government Pledges $45 Million To Support Music
“Music is a vast employer of young people, it is a vehicle for investment in the province, a digitally cutting-edge industry and one of Ontario’s global competitive advantages.”
Steven Soderbergh’s Bleak Assessment Of Movies As Artform
“The problem, as he sees it, is that the committees and the companies, in the supposed service of the audience, have squeezed much of the cinema out of movies. With a mixture of pessimism, resignation and good humor, Mr. Soderbergh surveyed a landscape at once crowded and bleak, as filmmakers struggle to remain true to their vocations and find a home for their work.”
Mariinsky II Theatre Opens In St. Petersburg
The $700 million, 2,000-seat venue, “connected to the original, ornate 19th-century Mariinsky Theater by a pedestrian bridge over a canal, … is the first new Russian opera house to aspire to international significance since the time of the czars.”
Celebrities Of ‘Swinging London’ Era Caught Up In Sex Crimes Probe
“The suspects include a flamboyant pop star, a sharp-tongued comedian, a disc jockey known as ‘the hairy cornflake’ and a quirky Australian-born entertainer who performed at the queen’s diamond jubilee concert. … In American terms, it is as if Captain Kangaroo, Dick Clark and Jerry Lewis were suddenly being accused of committing sexual crimes dating back 30 or 40 years.”
Lectures and Twitter Novels: Steven Soderbergh, Post-Cinema
“With the release of Side Effects earlier this year, Steven Soderbergh’s retirement from filmmaking (at least for the big screen), announced in 2011, finally took effect. Liberation might be a better word, since his recent activities seem to belong to a restless person newly freed from the constraints of his profession, rather than a used-up man at rest.”